Social media has become a valuable tool for businesses today, but it's also eroding traditional marketing and product development models.

Curtis Hougland, CEO of social media marketing firm Attention USA, recently spoke about the myths of social media and how businesses can better utilize it at the 2012 Best of Breed Conference. He also sat down with CRN TV to discuss the positive and negative effects of social media on business marketing and branding.

For example, Hougland says the number of client engagement and acquisition routes used to be very narrow, but the options have been widened with things like Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites, which forces businesses to be in more places at more times.

"The customer journey used to be a lot more linear," he said. "And now because of social media and the Internet, my customer journey and how I make purchase decisions is very vast."

Hougland also says social media can dilute your business' marketing message. For example, when a friend shares content through social media, the user tends to respond more to the friend who's sharing the content rather than the brand of that content.

"It's really difficult to build brands for social media. It's pretty diluted with brands," Hougland says.

For more on the benefits and challenges of social media branding, see the full CRN TV interview with Curtis Hougland.

PUBLISHED OCT. 22, 2012