Abram Brown
 

Gary Vaynerchuk has some advice for you. He would like it if you stopped behaving like a 19-year-old boy when managing your social media. Too many businesses are looking for rapid monetization from their social-media marketing efforts, acting like a hormone-induced teenage male with his prom date, Vaynerchuk says. Instead, take it slower. 

"Don't treat it like a one-night stand," he told entrepreneurs at the 2011 Inc. 500 | 500 Conference in Washington, D.C. "Everyone in social-media marketing is acting like a 19-year-old. You're trying to close on the first transaction."

When businesses first started exploring the Web, they didn't see immediate monetization either. Now, it's unimaginable stay offline. E-commerce has taken off. Customers got over their fear of inputting their credit card numbers into a computer. Social-media marketing's monetization will come, too, he says. "People don't want to embrace culture shifts because it's not going to happen in the next 20 minutes," he says. 

"When I hear people debate the ROI of social media? It makes me remember why so many business fail," Vaynerchuk says. "Most businesses are not playing the marathon. They're playing the sprint. They're not worried about lifetime value and retention. They're worried about short-term goals."

So what should you be doing? Think long term, and consider how you can earn life-long customers. Says Vaynerchuk, "Social-media marketing is like going Beyonce on your customers. You've got to put a f---ing ring on it."