In his book 'Outliers' author and commenter Malcolm Gladwell argued that to become a real expert on anything, you needed to spend a minimum of 10,000 hours on it. That's about four hours every day for about ten years.

Let's not get tied up too much in his methodology but accept that it takes a very long time to get to know a subject inside out. Given that by far and away the most popular social media site with more than 800 million members, Facebook, only went on line less than eight years ago, there must be a lot of people going around saying they're social media experts when they are nothing of the sort.

A lot of those so called experts predicted that social media would make traditional marketing activity redundant as the free flow of information online would take over from the 'hard sell'.

Well they were wrong. What has to be remembered is that social media is simply another communications channel and as such won't work in isolation. 

In order for social media to deliver, it has to be part of an integrated marketing strategy that includes the whole suite of communications tools in the box: public relations, direct marketing and advertising.

It is simply just another way getting a message out to those you want to hear it.

Just like other communications it has to add some value for the person receiving it. It has been proved great for a call to action and for building brand awareness not so great as selling platform. And it's selling companies are interested.

It is the traditional advertising and marketing channels used effectively to key audiences that are still making the conversions from interest to sale. But that's not to say social media can't add value when used creatively as part of a wider marketing activity.

The Walkers Crisps campaign is a great example. Their Facebook site was the call to action for their 'Do us a flavour campaign' where they gave away a £50,000 prize to whoever could come up with the most popular new flavour. It was a triumph in building brand awareness with more than 1.5 million entries online and secured global PR through traditional media channels on the back of it. All in all more than one million people voted for their favourite from six finalists.

Eventually one in five British households tried one of the new flavours before the winner was declared. A social media success, but not on it's own.

It's not a replacement for mainstream communications channels but a great additional tool for marketeers. Don't let any so called experts tell you otherwise. For a great summary of why social media is for your business check out Danny Brown.