The article is written very much against social media sales people, who are basically just like sales people in any other field. The truth is that an awful lot of companies have hopped on the social wagon and push for it themselves, without needing to be sold on it.
Social media is just a small part of my company, we offer it as a service but only to companies who specifically request it, and then we ask that they provide expected KPIs up front which we can hit, and that KPIs should be related to the platform (e.g. likes, reach on Facebook), not related to sales - this way it is up to them to decide whether the spend is worth it or not, all we do is ensure that we deliver what they want from us. We've never pushed anyone to increase spend on social media (from a company point of view, we'd far rather they spend marketing budget with us away from social media...)
Despite this, despite the fact that we don't push it at all, our biggest social account spends $500k/year on Facebook with us, purely on community building. So sure, maybe some companies are being sold on it by salesmen, but plenty are making their own choices here.
Social media is just a small part of my company, we offer it as a service but only to companies who specifically request it, and then we ask that they provide expected KPIs up front which we can hit, and that KPIs should be related to the platform (e.g. likes, reach on Facebook), not related to sales - this way it is up to them to decide whether the spend is worth it or not, all we do is ensure that we deliver what they want from us. We've never pushed anyone to increase spend on social media (from a company point of view, we'd far rather they spend marketing budget with us away from social media...)
Despite this, despite the fact that we don't push it at all, our biggest social account spends $500k/year on Facebook with us, purely on community building. So sure, maybe some companies are being sold on it by salesmen, but plenty are making their own choices here.