If you find yourself encouraging clients to flit from the last social media tool to the next latest greatest thing, without having a compelling rationale that fits into building long-term value for the client, you may suffer from Shiny Object Syndrome. Or it may be the client that suffers from the syndrome. Either way, S.O.S. can be dangerous.

On March 23, Geoff Livingston led a lively discussion about Shiny Object Syndrome at Social Media Club Philly. Shiny Object Syndrome is that thing that makes PR and Marketing people gravitate to the latest new social media phenomena without much thought about the costs and benefits of doing so: from blogs, to twitter, to facebook, iPhone Apps, what is your client actually getting out of their engagement with the latest sparkly social media bauble?

Inspired by Austin Kleon’s approach to visual notetaking, I used a bunch of cartoon bubbles to capture participants’ contributions.

So do you have Shiny Object Syndrome? Answer these simple questions to find out:

1) Do you convince clients to hop on the latest social media bandwagon without thinking about how this fits into their long term communication strategy?

2) Do you promise unrealistic ROI from a client’s engagement with a social media tool?

3) Do make your clients feel uncool if they don’t tweet?

4) Are you unable to articulate why a client should use the latest social media tool, other than, “Everybody is doing it?”

5) Do you confuse the social media environments where your friends and peers hang out with the environments where your clients customers are?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may suffer from S.O.S. But don’t despair. Here are a couple of points I took away from the discussion that may help you:

1) Even if a shiny objects dujour may NOT make sense as a communication channel for a company, the company can find value by monitoring the conversation in such a channel.

2) You have got to think about how the latest shiny object can (or cannot) contribute to value for a company in the long term. If it is not a good fit, it may be the shiny object itself, or it may be the proposed approach to engaging with people via that object.

3) It’s easier to facilitate a conversation than to dictate one. So if you client does start playing with shiny objects, make sure they are playing nice, or they will get nicely played.

4) Create some kind of measurable goals for whatever your effort is with the shiny object. That way you will have a tangible record of success, or lack thereof. Both are useful, either by showing how skilled you are, or in giving you information on what not to do next time.

What are your tips on containing Shiny Object Syndrome?