But, that said, it’s not for all of them. The personality, the curiosity and ability to grasp the technology and the desire to self-promote and think out of the box all has to be strong. So what mix of social networking we recommend depends on the client and their service or product.

I personally don’t want to go to a blog for information on a product to buy (unless maybe it’s a self-published book). I don’t want to scroll through archives and search for the information that is going to help me make a buying decision. I may like to see if I “like” the face behind the company, though – it’s culture, mission, truth, vision. Making a contact and judging the quality of that contact is what I use social networking for. The architecture of a well-designed website (connected to other sources of information) is still the best way to deliver, brochure-like, the succinct data I need for making a purchasing choice of the product or service itself.

So I see social networking as supportive to the process (either in a first or last stage), but not the core. At least not for the foreseeable future. Social networking is still ‘the cocktail party’ – essential for establishing relationships and developing brand loyalty, but not the business office where you sign the contract.

1. Too cluttered – Adwords, Banners, Too much info in a single page etc.

Make it simple and easy to understand. People will call up if they need more info.

2. Expensive: You have mentioned it. It is really getting expensive in a world of blogs, free sites etc. Why are they charging more for just 10/15 html pages (it is 15 dollars plus). Is it really that much worth? I really doubt?

3. Promotion:

Promotion does not happen exactly the way it should. Rather after launching, they are mostly silent. Now everyone is not a Google or Amazon.

Look at Gary Vaynerchuk for example, he’s great at social media, have a huge army of fans, but at the end of the day he still have a wine store for customers to find out more about his wine and buy wine from. The rest of the social media tools he uses are just weapons to supplement his business.

Look at Obama’s campaign, he and his team uses all kinds of social networks to reach out to majority of Americans and is one of the most successful social media campaign ever, but at the end of the day he still needs an informational website barackobama.com to let people find out more about him and his efforts, can we say that that is not necessary?

An informational or static site if you prefer to call it is not obsolete, in fact it is the most fundamental ground of any campaign or any business. You might not interact with it as much as you will with a blog or a site with dynamic content, but you still need it, if you don’t, you can tweet all day, facebook all day, viral videos on youtube all day, but there’ll be no centralized place for user to know what all the noise is all about.

There are more and more purpose-specific providers that offer easy-to-use yet visually customizable platforms: WordPress is great for blogging, Shopify for e-commerce, Ning for social networks, Fullseat for events.

I think that instead of building static pages, brands will mix-and-match these services (say, via subdomains) to create their online presence. And although it will look like a single web site, it will be a combination of cloud-based tools skinned to look like part of the same experience.