1. Social media is free. This is based on the fact many of the tools available to implement social media are, in fact, free such as Wordpress, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, del.icio.us, Digg. The reality, however, is while the tools are free to use, it takes time, effort and resources (aka a dedicated employee such as a community manager) to implement and operate social media programs. It's not just a matter of setting up a few accounts, and trying to automate as much as possible. To do it well and properly, social media takes time and money.

2. Social media is easy. Among the leading social media myths, this is perhaps the biggest one. To be honest, doing social media well is far from glamorous. It means hours of effort to monitor, track and engage with people on dozens of platforms.

3.Social media is about the tools. As mentioned above, the tools mean nothing if you don't have someone to leverage them. The tools are cool but even the best tools are worthless without a clear goal of what and how they should be used.

4. Social media is a standalone activity. Once you have a blog up people will flock to your business. Wrong. Social media needs to be incorporated into the company's marketing, communications and sales activities. Social media is a not an add-on or an accessory.  To be successful, social media needs to be part of and aligned with a company's brand, messaging and strategic goals.

5. Social measure is difficult to measure.  There's no lack of tools available to track, monitor and measure social media activity, many of them free. At the same time, increasingly more sophisticated and value social media measurement and analytics tools are being created that will provide companies with amazing insight about what's happening within the social media universe and who's doing it.