I’m no social media expert, but I do have several resources that I turn to when my clients need counsel navigating and exploiting the world of social media and social networks, including my Crosswind colleague Ephraim Cohen.

Ephraim’s philosophy is one that I very much appreciate: Social Media, despite its explosive growth and tremendous hype, is but one media channel in the comprehensive mix and all media channels should be thoroughly evaluated for their potential contribution to achieving an organization’s communications, marketing or public relations goals.

For most organization’s, social media’s primary benefit is to energize the brand or rev up the marketing engine.  It’s a matter of taking an offline community and connecting them via online social networks to further fuel their passion or interest in the product, service, issue or cause that connects this disparate group of individuals to begin with.  There are numerous other roles social media can fill for an organization.  Customer service-oriented organizations have taken a huge leap forward by monitoring twitter and other social media for complaints or issues that arise.

Not long ago I was having a conversation with a guy who’s probably a “social media expert,” as much as there is one.  I’ll tell you up front that it puts me off that he calls himself an expert.  He pointed to the fact that he has more than 1,000 followers on twitter, laughed, picked up his Big Gulp and took a swig as if to say, “Beat that buddy.”   (For the record, I have no desire to beat that, and Mark Cuban has 100,000 followers, so there.)

We then talked about how he’s pushing the social media envelope as he described using aggregated geotagging and twitter recommendations to help customers find cool events or discounts on behalf of a client.  Wow.  That’s cool.  And it cost about $180,000 to implement, which honestly isn’t too great a fee to build something that helps one’s customers find value. Customers will appreciate and have greater affinity for the brand.

Then today I ran across a commentary from Adam Sernovitz describing the kind of talk a client gets when an agency is more interested in selling you an expensive new campaign in some experimental new venue — where the fees are high and it’s cool for them.  He says when they’re pushing the envelope, they may well be messing with your budget and your communications plans. Hmmm.

I prefer Ephraim’s approach. And I suspect my client’s do to.