Such agencies then feel they should be in an authoritative position on the subject. They don't wish to lose any credibility by actually admitting this isn't their core expertise, they'd feel exposed and a bit silly (honesty doesn't seem to matter) and of course they can hear the "kerching" of the extra revenue which may come their way.

So what happens is, agencies "play the game" and begin to regurgitate sound bytes from the numerous and various articles spread over the web (most of which have been plagiarised from a very limited source of genuine innovative thinking). Then, after a while, they start to believe their own bulls**t and believe they sound credible. Because of the perceived recency of social web (when actually it has been around for several years) the ability to sound convincing, especially to a client who is looking for advice and has limited knowledge, is fairly easy. We have seen this happen in meetings, at seminars and networking events many times and have felt the need to cut into the conversation to prevent bad decisions being made. Observing this and having conversations with some of the largest agencies who, in some of their more candid moments will actually admit "off the record" that they really don't have a clue. We could name names...but that may land us in some hot water...three letter acronyms...oops! This whole situation just isn't right.

It is appreciated that organisations, especially in the current economic climate, want to minimise risk and therefore turn to well established digital agencies who are financially stable and safe. However, some common sense should prevail when you understand the core skills and experience of these agencies. Typically they do a very good job at media buying and advertising; design work, may dabble in paid search, venture out into search engine optimisation (quality is debatable) and now have probably set up a new Social Media Department so as not to miss the bandwagon.

And then....they start talking about Social Media Marketing...selling your products via the social web. If that is the direction you have been steered down and your twitter updates are all about discounted products; your facebook fan page is talking about up and coming sales you should stop right now, as this won't work. In fact, it will tarnish your brand.

Think about your customers and what they want. Look at their motivation; understand their behaviour; work with them and help them. Give them advice, support, customer service, make them laugh, chat to them on a one to one...just try to avoid the constant sales pitch. You don't like it when it is aimed at you and they don't like it either.

So when your incumbent agency, who were originally selected by your organisation for something totally different, starts to come to you with "social media marketing" ideas, look at them long and hard, and ask some challenging questions, such as:-

• Why would this appeal to my customers?
• Who would it appeal to?
• What exactly is the objective here?
• How does this integrate into our overall customer contact strategy?
• Is this in sync with our brand values, the things we stand for?
• What are the performance measures?
• How are we going to measure this?
• Who makes this happen?