Last year, Chris Brogan coined the phrase “the audacity of free” to refer to the entitlement his “friends” feel they have about getting free entry into conferences that he and his team spend months to organize. Somehow, individuals forget along the way that costs accrue when considering the venue, food, exhibit hall, and the staff required on hand to run the event smoothly. At the end of the day, contrary to seemingly popular belief, the hosts aren’t the only ones pocketing the money.
Yet with social media, there’s a perception that it’s easy to score freebies. After all, we become easily connected and six degrees of separation is slowly becoming three degrees.
Social media has introduced incentives to the online space, encouraging others to connect with your business. It shouldn’t be that way, but that’s the way it is. You want something from someone, so you need to compel them to engage or they’d have no reason to. In fact, in a test a colleague of mine ran with sponsored advertisements, the incentive-based campaign was much more successful than the original information-only campaign. But many individuals take this concept too far, expecting a freebie at every turn. And unfortunately, social media is at fault for breeding this mentality and causing it to spread.
Just last year, I became 
I’ve been your buddy since you were open to a handful of select universities and were called thefacebook.com. In fact, you can validate that by cross checking my user ID, 102991, which should indicate that I’ve been around for a real long time (since February 2004, to be more precise). And though I signed up when I was a recent college graduate, 
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Tamar Weinberg is a social media enthusiast with a passion for all things tech and productivity. She provides consulting in internet marketing and manages Community Support & Advertising at Mashable. Tamar is also the author of 
Digital Marketing Specialist, Social Media Consultant,
and Tech Geek at Heart