I, along with a few of my colleagues and another guy in my building that I’ve actually never met, have been partaking in a little Foursquare action over the last several months, and I have to say my biggest motivation is that I want to accumulate more points than them — oh, and to remain Mayor of Fitting Group! This is actually hard for this new mom to do; I just don’t get out that much anymore.

Since launching a year ago, the blogosphere has been a flutter with discussions on the true value of Foursquare as the next social media outlet and about how creepy it is that people are actually identifying their locations to the world. (Come on, admit it! You have friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter that you don’t know well enough to inform them of where you are, or more importantly where you are not — @home!)

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As the Public Relations Coordinator at our agency, I find myself constantly discussing with clients the many benefits of social media: engaging, free, easy to maintain and most importantly – allows you to have direct conversations about your product or service with your customers. All really good things – right?

So as a young Republican, I should be enthused about the following:

Last week, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, candidates to become chairman of the RNC were asked at a debate, among other questions, whether they have any followers on Twitter. Almost all of them responded ‘yes’ and went on to quote the exact numbers of social media followers and friends they had accumulated on not only Twitter, but Facebook as well.

This somewhat unusual line of questioning is part of a larger movement by the Republican party to focus on the Internet and social media after the November drubbing by the more tech-savvy Democrats. In fact, a coalition of Republicans came up with a ten-point action plan outlining how to rebuild the Republican party, with “the Internet” as the number one priority. According to them, “Winning the technology war with the Democrats must be the RNC’s number one priority in the next four years.”

So am I, as the young, social media-pushing Republican, enthused about this? No. Here’s why.

If the Republican party really does plow ahead making the Internet its number one priority, it will be missing a vital step in the process of rejuvenating itself – REBUILDING THE BRAND (or, as we like to say, spanking).

Whether it is social media, online advertising or good old-fashioned print advertising, it doesn’t matter which outlet you’re using if the right message isn’t there. The majority of my peers (who supported Obama to McCain 2:1) were not supporting Obama because they received his tweets or were friends with him on Facebook. They supported him because they wanted change and his brand represented that. Consistently.

The Republican party has already realized it needs to revitalize itself, and that’s an important first step for Challenger Brands. But before it jumps the gun and tries to “get out there” and “connect,” there needs to be consensus about what it stands for and what message it’s trying to portray. Once everyone has a message and cause to rally around, then online support will develop naturally – that’s the beauty of social media.

Until then, tweet off.