I like the approach "As if you were a guest in their home" idea. That's an approach that really would engage me with a social media program for a company rather than turn me off.
I think strategies that include people are innovative and interesting. The example of Old Spice and Twitter is in my opinion an interesting and innovative strategy. The fact that the public had a large part to play in the ads made them more like entertainment than a cold hard sales pitch. Old Spice got my eyeballs and my attention and didn't offend me which is what its all about.
Also I wonder if there is any benefits to a "community" for non-business social networking, sometimes a "community" will form. People get together that wouldn't outside of network and start interacting on multiple levels. The upside to a community is it tends to form a large stable user base with low maintenance costs. The downside would be you need some one to moderate it but that person needs to allow some off topic conversations. For example a bunch of Ford Truck fans go to a Ford social site and mostly talk about Ford Trucks. But they might also talk about their families, jobs, life experiences. They become a closer knit group and form a network that helps each other buy more Ford products or will actually reach out to non-network members and encourage them to buy Ford products just to bring them into the community.
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