By Jonathan D. Spiliotopoulos

Consumers and businesses alike know the mall is an expensive place. Whether you’re in search of a lease or a tee-shirt, it’s a safe bet you’ll spend more money at the mall than you would at the local plaza. Yet malls across the country are some of the most popular places in a community. People congregate, socialize, exchange ideas, play games, and trade all kinds of products and services at the mall — in spite of the cost.

Social networks are very similar to malls, except that the costs are hidden — both from businesses and consumers. The advertising-funded social networks attract the current generation of free seekers (the previous generation had free web hosting from the likes of Geocities, Tripod, and others). Just like at malls, folks congregate, socialize, exchange ideas, play games, and more all from the comfort of their home.

Of course, not wanting to be left out of this new paradigm, businesses are connecting at unprecedented rates, interacting with their market, socializing with their customers, and more. But what’s the catch?

When human beings are disconnected from the true cost of something, they inevitably pay more. How many of you making $50,000/year would really be happy cutting the IRS a check for $8000 every year, but barely notice if it’s taken, on the sly, from your check every week? Social networks, vis a vis business usage, tend to divorce investment from return in a similar fashion. But that doesn’t happen because the platform is inherently costly; rather, it happens when we abandon old ideals in favor of new ideas.

There are a few things my grandmother used to remind anybody who would listen. Among her famous phrases, usually accompanied by a wagging finger emphasizing each syllable, was “always ask ‘why?’” When faced with the prospect of incurring real costs, businesses excel at following Grandma’s advice. The decision to spend $15,000 on a printed awareness campaign will generate at least ten versions of the same analytical spreadsheet, consume countless hours of time in meetings and phone conferences, and create the equivalent of a ream’s worth of paper in emails debating the topic. By the time an ad makes it into a trade publication, it’s very clear why its there — even if so much time has passed, the ad is no longer relevant ;)

But, when business men and women hear the word, “free,” all of the sudden the process of isolating problems, determining goals, and devising solutions comes to a audibly grinding halt. Instead of deciding that a Facebook account is a good solution for Problem X, or a good way to wage Campaign Y, they rush to figure out how they can take advantage of this new free program. In other words, they seek problems to fit solutions.

Corporations know that public relations (PR) is as important a part of their communications lineup plan as marketing and advertising. They tend to view social networks as a form of free PR. Since traditional PR is often costly, but effective — and, indeed, essential — it’s easy to be swayed by the logic that free PR somehow carries a better return on investment. (“Even if it’s not as good as the ‘real deal,’ who cares; it’s free!”) While this reasoning is perfectly logical, it’s based on incomplete information that would have been discovered by asking a simple question, “why?”

Traditional PR works because there’s a point to every campaign. Trained professionals are approached with a problem — an upcoming event that needs attendees, a new product that needs attention — and devise solutions specific to the problem. They engage the audience in a limited way, about a specific topic, and then they do something that can’t be done on a social network: they shut up.

That’s right. They shut up. And in so doing, they ensure that money is spent on messaging, not on constant contact.

Customers don’t like to see storefronts without staff. They don’t like to see customers with questions to which there are no answers. They don’t like to walk down the halls filled with loitering teenagers causing trouble. The mall requires constant effort to maintain.

The same principle applies to some forms of social media. Successful forums must be moderated. Successful blogs must be active. Social networking sites must be monitored constantly, and replies, even to the most irrelevant of questions, issued promptly — for your lack of attention to one person will be even more noticeable, and more damaging, than all the happy keyboard “clients” that came before.

How much would it cost your company to issue a weekly blog entry (do you even have that much to say?) How much would it cost in time (or in clout), to reply (or not) to every question posted on a forum? How much would staffing this mall cost?

Is being involved with social media worth the cost? Unfortunately, I can’t answer that for you. Value, ultimately, is determined by balancing the cost against the benefit. This article was not meant to put you off social networking. It was meant to educate you enough to consider that free isn’t always so.

In the interest of full disclosure, social media, including blogs, forums, and networks are absolutely tools I keep on my digital belt. However, I find them used much more sparingly, and with much greater success, when my clients follow Grandma’s — and my — advice.

Always ask, “why?”