“Social media experts” are always banging on about “authenticity” and “authentic conversations”. But how authentic are they really?

The mess around Eurostar this weekend reminded me of my favourite “conversation agency”, we are social (who list Eurostar as a client, and are apparently in charge of the brand’s social media strategy). Let’s leave aside the pisspoor job Eurostar and their representatives have done this weekend: Mike Butcher has taken them apart already.

But take a look at we are social’s primary Twitter feed:

Notice that? Yeah, dodgy innit. 186 tweets but nearly 30,000 followers, with about the same number of followees. So what did others think?

Much the same as me, then.

There are two reasons these kind of numbers appear: either we are social paid for Twitter followers using a service like uSocial or someone in the office used a script that automatically follows and unfollows other people to artificially inflate the follower count.

When an individual does this, it’s a bit tragic. But when an agency whose reputation depends on authenticity does it, it’s much worse.

“But @wearesocial is just a feed!” whined Nathan McDonald to me last night. Err, OK, Nathan… why bother faking so many followers then? How is it in any way authentic to inflate your follower numbers using an automated script? Are you really “listening, understanding and engaging in conversations” with 30,000 people?

No, Nick. Neither do I.

What a brilliant wheeze social media is. So many big brands falling over themselves to throw cash at agencies staffed by schoolchildren. Look at we are social’s Who We Are page. Brilliant: every teenager with a Twitter account is a “manager” or an “executive”. (I’m not the only one to have noticed this.) I’ve met several of the people who now work at that agency and haven’t been impressed by one of them.

Social media experts, eh. There aren’t enough bullets.

(Image: Paul Clarke)