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The idea of using celebrities as a means to promote a product isn’t anything new. Remember the Wheaties box? Thirty years ago, getting on the Wheaties box was the pinnacle of celebrity endorsements. I still remember sitting at the kitchen table when I was eight or nine years old, eating my cereal and staring at a cardboard box with Michael Jordan’s picture staring back at me. Later, when I was a teenager, the celebrity “Got Milk” ads became my favorite part of flipping through any teen magazine. Do you remember the Backstreet Boys milk ad? I do, and so do thousands of other digital natives. From TV, to radio, to print, celebrities ruled the marketing world.

But now, with the rise of social media, celebrities don’t even need a photo shoot or TV commercial to become a company’s new spokesperson. All they need is an Instagram (or YouTube) account, free product samples, and a dab of creativity. If you don’t have the money to launch a big advertising initiative, it’s no problem. For companies that are looking to reach a certain user base, there are plenty of famous Instagrammers out there who will tweet a picture and an endorsement for a few bucks. They get to build their brand name and you get to dip a toe into the world of celebrity spokespeople. Not a bad deal, right?

In the last couple of months, though, it’s become clear that not all celebrities are savvy advertisers. While sometimes the product pushes are innocuous enough, recently one “celebrity” posted a poorly vetted endorsement that caused quite a bit of fall out. A few weeks back, a pregnant Kim Kardashian posted an Instagram photo of herself and a bottle of prescription morning sickness pills from Duchesnay USA. She raved about the drug and urged her followers to talk to their doctors about using it. The problem was she failed to mention the half-dozen side effects of the pills-a faux pas that wasn’t only misleading, but against the law. Thankfully, the Food and Drug Administration took notice and demanded she remove the post.

While Kardashian removed the post quickly, her actions initiated a hot debate across the web, leading many to wonder who should be responsible for monitoring product endorsements on social media sites. Should the FDA be scrolling through hundreds of thousands of posts looking for offenders, or should the social media site itself be responsible for censoring such content?
Read more: Virtual Wheaties Box: The New Era of Social Media Marketing

If you have a business, you need to be on social media – it really is that simple. A business without a social media presence is like a driver cruising down the street at night with no headlights. It’s dangerous, and it significantly lowers the probability you’ll end up where you want to be (and even if you do, it’s going to take you a lot longer to get there).

There’s no question that social media is a key factor to success in business these days. But how do you pay for it? How do you find the time to manage your accounts?

First, let’s get one thing straight. There’s a lot you can do on social media for free. You can set up a Facebook account and start posting, just like you can set up a Twitter feed and start tweeting. The problem, of course, is your reach. Because so much information is being shared on these social platforms, the networks themselves have no choice but to filter out some updates to be seen by their intended recipients and to let others go unseen.

Facebook, for instance, states that, “Of the 1,500+ stories a person might see whenever they log onto Facebook, News Feed displays approximately 300. To choose which stories to show, News Feed ranks each possible story (from more to less important) by looking at thousands of factors relative to each person.”

Read more: How To Start Investing In Social Media Marketing The Right Way

Any effective digital marketing strategy involves an integral component that is social media. Startup or not, it is one of the best digital platforms for propelling businesses forward rapidly, provided that social media marketing is done right.

For newcomers to the digital marketing industry, making a good first impression on social media is extra critical as they only get one chance to make it right. Losing that chance means lagging behind competitors and repairing reputation which in of itself a not so easy chore.

Don’t fall to the social media trap! Be informed, know these top 8 common mistakes.

Read more: 8 Social Media Marketing Mistakes to Avoid (Infographic)