Recently I have written about how social media is entering the mainstream of PR profession and how a huge number of people without direct experience with social media go around declaring themselves as "experts".

Apparently this abundance of noise is being observed by more and more people and is stirring up serious resentment. I came across a recent post on PC World's blog that got as blunt as it could be: "Beware the Social Media Charlatans".

Read that post if you are considering social media for business!

My quick recap would again emphasize what I said a few weeks ago: do not do "social" technology for sake of technology. Ignore shiny bells and whistles of the latest "social" doodads. and work back from your specific business goals. Put specific numbers on leads or sales you want to generate. Work back to your offers and targeting. Then look at sources of Internet traffic. Only then consider how social options may (or may not) deliver enough visitors at low enough cost.

Be sure to disabuse yourself of the notion that social media is free!

Too many people think that just because you do not have to pay to create a Blogspot blog or a profile on Facebook or Twitter, there is no cost involved. Be sure to factor in the amount of time you have to invest in effectively tending to your presence in this interactive media. Who will be planning? Who will be posting? Who will be monitoring and reviewing? Who will respond to issues that come up all the time? What will be the total cost of staff's time? If you are looking for a detailed breakdown of costs, check out this great post that tells it like it is with a lot of specificity: "Please stop saying social media marketing is free".

Fake "social media experts" would not give you such straight talk

Why? Because they are not capable of constructing a plausible ROI business case and would rather have you believe that "you have to do it just because you have to do it", with them of course being paid to do it for you. To a certain extent, social media presence is becoming a "must have", absence of which may (or may not) affect your reputation - translating into gained or lost business with existing clients. But this does not mean you should throw lots of money at something with a questionable business case or listen to people who would say ROI or direct impact on revenue and profits does not matter. You could still get some returns on applications that are not directly promotional in nature (opinion research comes to mind), but consider how much you would invest in those areas if social media never existed.

Scrutiny of social media investments is great news if you ask me

New ideas tend to get overhyped and attract impostors. Even when these ideas are fundamentally sound. Unfortunately rising noise makes it harder for the uninitiated to figure out what is going on and how to best use new capabilities. The scrutiny and backlash helps everyone "get real" and create sound criteria and metrics that would demonstrate benefits "beyond the reasonable doubt". So, make sure to question anyone who would tell you that social media is a silver bullet.

The author of this post has been doing social media way before the term came in vogue and is never afraid of being questioned :)