Stephen Baker has a fascinating story in BusinessWeek that looks at the growing scrutiny that social media consultants/strategists are starting to encounter as social media moves from being something shiny and new into a part of integrated marketing plans.

What Baker puts into the spotlight is the fact there’s an awful lot of enthusiastic talk going on about the joys and benefits of social media. This includes mantras such as “It’s all about the conversation”, “You need to engage” and “You must be transparent”.

But the reality is when it comes to social media, there’s an awful lot of talk but really not a lot of walk. There’s no lack of people more than spread the world by giving workshops, speeches and presentations, or provide strategic recommendations on how social media can deliver all kinds of wonderful things. And there’s millions of people happily using Twitter, Facebook and blogs.

This activity, however, vastly overshadows what businesses are doing with social media. It’s still early days, and many companies are still trying to figure out how they can use social media. If you look at the case studies being tossed around to support the growth of social media, the same case studies come up again and again. Let’s talk about Naked Pizza or Dell or Starbuck..or Naked Pizza….

One of the biggest problem with social media is it’s often being sold as the solution. Let’s sprinkle in some Twitter updates with a great Facebook Page and a YouTube channel, and it will just be a matter of time before good things start to happen – however “good things” is defined.

In reality, social media is just another weapon within a marketing, communications and sales arsenal. It’s a new-fangled delivery mechanism that needs to be integrated into an overarching corporate strategy. Sure, social media can do new and different things but it’s can’t be used in isolation.

When talking with clients, one of the first things I ask about is their marketing strategy and the target audiences they want to reach. I want them to tell me what tools are working, why they want to use social media and what they hope to get from it. In many cases, the initial work involves creating or massaging their messaging and branding before even discussing a strategic plan for social media.

To be fair, I’m pretty bullish about social media and the impact it can have on how companies do business. At the same time, it’s also important to take a deep breath and recognize that social media isn’t an elixir that will magically create wonderful results.

All the hype surrounding social media and tools such as Twitter and Facebook overshadow the fact that effective marketing and communications will continue to include a variety of tools. To counter all the happy talk from social media consultants about what could be, the biggest thing needed right now is perspective.

Note: To be clear, while I’m obviously active within the social within landscape, social media consulting accounts for a relatively small part of my consulting practice. Most of my business involves straightforward marketing and communications issues such as creating better and more effective corporate messaging that can be delivered over a variety of media platforms.