Blogs are a fantastic platform for your personal opinions and advice. Some of these opinions are based on data, some based on personal experience and intuition.

And although I prefer to be respectful of everyone’s opinions, there’s certain advice floating around that deserves to be called out.

The following are four opinions I consider misleading and far too pervasive in today’s marketplace.

“Your Social Media Posts Should Just Be Automated."

To save time, companies will sometimes schedule a week’s worth of tweets at once. Tools like Hootsuite make this easy to set up and manage.

The problem with this approach is it makes you look like an out-of-touch robot.

For example, during the Super Bowl, social media sites were abuzz about the game and its commercials. Everyone had something to say about what was going on. Then you get that one guy, who also happens to be a self-proclaimed sports nut. He tweets, “10 Hiring Mistakes You Should Never Make."

Now, do you really think he’s sitting there on Super Bowl night offering hiring advice? I doubt it. Does it make him sound like an out-of-touch robot? Sure does!

While it’s easy to schedule around an event like the Super Bowl, you can’t predict other major events. If and when the next national tragedy occurs, you don’t want to be auto-tweeting about “Six #Awesome Tips To Nail Your Next Presentation."

Context is a big part of social media. When you miss opportunities to contribute (or simply step aside) from a larger conversation, it becomes obvious you’re not paying attention.

"SEO Is Dead. Long live ______!"

Search the phrase “SEO is dead” in Google and you get nearly 100,000 results. This has become a very popular (and over-used) proclamation. Especially by “experts" looking to peddle a new service or simply get attention.

People turn to search engines every day to find answers to their questions…about 3.5 billion times per day in Google alone.

That means you should be there. And SEO (the practice of getting your site to show in search engines for related searches) is the way to do it.

Until people stop using search engines to find answers to their questions, SEO should continue to be an important part of any marketing strategy.

"Blogging Is The Most Important Online Strategy."

Blogging has somehow become the go-to, end-all-be-all marketing strategy.

“You just need a blog,” they say.

“Blog more,” they insist!

I am not trying to put down content. Content is everything. But people misinterpret this to mean you just need to dump as much writing on your site as possible, as long as it kinda-sorta falls into the scope of your business.

Here’s what happens when you take that approach: you see spikes in your site traffic (great!) from people all over the world (not so great…) who will never convert (so...what’s the point?).

If you cannot create really great content (and I mean really great), don't waste your time. You may be successful getting more search traffic, but it won’t be worth anything.

“All you really need to do is ______."

Back in January of 2014, I wrote about the importance of diversifying your online marketing tactics. This advice came about following Google’s massive algorithm change, dropping some businesses from the top of the page 1 to the bottom of page 8. Business that relied on high rankings for new leads saw their new business go kaput overnight.

Scary thought, isn’t it?

This is the issue with buying into one or two services and billing it as your "online marketing solution." The digital space changes too quickly and too often to be overly invested in only one or two tactics. What happens when consumer behaviors change and you’re not prepared?

You’re left in the dust.

And unfortunately, a lot of the “consultants” running around are really only there to sell you a service or two.

Someone who sells you just SEO or just social media or just content marketing is selling you what they do best, not necessarily what’s in your best interest. It’s like a patient getting treated by the pharmaceutical sales rep instead of the doctor. The sales rep sells you what they make. The doctor examines the problem and prescribes the best solution.

Big difference.

While a diverse, comprehensive approach costs more in the short term, it makes you more agile in the long term.