Advertising ain’t what it used to be.

Sales people are paying for the sins of estate agents, spivs and double glazing reps.

PR has suffered bad PR at the hands of, ahem, PRs. Spin is a dirty word don’t you know?

And marketing is doing it tough – the boss wants more for less, and you’d better make it all accountable and transparent…

What are you going to do about it?

Happily in digitalmud land it’s not all doom and gloom. We have an answer to the conundrum above. And it’s a simple answer:

Be yourself. In social media that is.

Customers don’t want you to be nameless, faceless organisations that will only talk to them if your people can read from a script. That’s not being authentic, and social media values authenticity above all else.

“93 percent of Americans believe a company should have a presence in social media, while an overwhelming 85 percent believe a company should not only be present, but also interact with its consumers via social media.”

So reported the Boston Globe about a study conducted in the US in 2008, and which showed the appetite of consumers for interaction with companies in online social spaces.

Great, so jump on Twitter and start selling your heart out. NO! Do that and you will be ensuring disaster.

The important statistic from the survey above is that only 25% of consumers want companies to market to them in online social spaces, so leave your best sales patter at home as no-one wants to hear it.

In fact, the Cone survey quoted above suggests 56% of American consumers feel both a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment.

So, what’s a business to do? Listen first – find out where your customers are and what they’re saying. Then get involved, but remember to be authentic to who you and what your brand is. If you are a firm of accountants, you probably shouldn’t trying talk street or slang with your community.

When you are part of the conversation, be helpful, be remarkable, be quick, but above all be human and stop trying to sell.

Can social media make you money? It’s not an unreasonable question given the way that social media is capable of hyping itself up.

The answer – yes and no.

Some of the spambots, internet marketers and multi-level marketers on Twitter and the rest of the web would have you believe that it is simply a matter of gaining a truckload of followers or traffic, and suddenly money will start magically appearing in your bank account.

Well, spammers are bammers and are guilty of clogging up the web with nonsense. Money won’t magically appear in your account if you have lots of Twitter followers.

But if you use Twitter to find interesting people to follow, you engage with them in a useful, meaningful way to develop a relationship, then you might make some money.

Take the example of Mackenzie Morgan Aerospace Consultants. Managing director Malcolm Cox (full disclosure – Murray’s brother) started dipping his toe in the social media water at the start of 2009 and can point to the positive difference it’s made to his bottom line.

Malcolm took his time to learn about social media before making a splash by following interesting and relevant people in his professional world. And as one of the first aerospace consultants to embrace social media so fully, he has managed to talk to – and win business from – people he would not normally have been able to access.

But here’s the rub – social media hasn’t made him any money. Malcolm has made the money by being good at what he does. He has simply used social media as a tool to develop new relationships and offer value to his professional community in a strategic way.

At the other end of the spectrum, Dell is the cause célèbre of the social media digerati by attributing $US3m in sales to Twitter. How did they do it? Have a look: http://twitter.com/delloutlet And effectively, it boils down to offering Twitter-exclusive offers, Dell Outlet deals and Outlet-specific information. Could you do the same?