Social media can be a powerful tool for individuals and organizations, especially in terms of raising your profile, defining your brand and communicating directly with customers.

But social media is not a one-size-fits-all panacea, as Advertising Age columnist B.L. Ochman points out in a recent column (Ten Things Social Media Can’t Do) on setting realistic expectations for your social media goals and strategy.

Among the items on her list of what social media can’t do:

Substitute for marketing strategy.
A Twitter campaign or a Facebook page that announces your weekly specials is not a marketing strategy.

You wouldn’t call having a LinkedIn profile a job-hunting strategy, would you? Same principle.

Succeed without top management buy-in.
Social media requires a way of thinking that includes willingness to listen to customers, make changes based on feedback and trust employees to talk to customers.

This probably is where doomed social media initiatives first begin to unravel. Many executives have this irrational thing about trust and control. They don’t have much of the former and want to retain too much of the latter. That’s deadly in social media, which is about openness, dialogue and weekly specials.

Be viewed as a short-term project.
Social media is not a one-shot deal. It’s a long-term commitment to openness, experimentation and change that requires time to bear fruit.

The suits are hating this more and more.

Be done in-house by the vast majority of companies.
You need strategy, contacts, tools, and experience — a combination not generally found in in-house teams, who often reinvent the wheel or use the wrong tools.

True. I have a friend who works as a graphics artist for a custom publisher, which “wants to get into social media.” The company has created a bunch of employee “teams” to “research” different aspects of social media. This process will drag on for weeks or months. Then any conclusions and recommendations will be mushy and ill-advised. Finally, implementation (if there is any) will be ineffective. Other than that the project is destined for great success.

Replace PR.
No matter how great your website, video contest, blog, Twitter strategy, etc., you still need publicity. Or you may end up with a tree falling in the forest and nobody hearing it.

Or even tweeting about it.

You can go here if you want to read the other things Ochman says social media can’t do.