Is your social media consultant worth their salt?

If you have hired, or are considering hiring, a social media consultant – here’s a great article from Mashable.com entitled “How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant”.

All great points, but for me the crux of the matter is in the intro: “If your company, no matter how big or small, has hired a social media consultant to augment (or God-forbid, replace) your PR team, there are some things …”

The parenthesis hits the nail on the head, in my opinion. Social media is not a silver bullet that can be parachuted into your marketing strategy to act in isolation. It needs to be tightly integrated with your brand and comms strategy to be effective.

Social media is a fantastic tool in the tool-box, but that’s it. You wouldn’t use a hammer if a spanner were more appropriate to the task at hand. Similarly, use the marketing and communications tools only when appropriate to what you are trying to achieve and only in combination with other appropriate tools that maximise the impact.