• A social media expert is like a “casual Olympian”. Nothing as amorphous, random and ever-changing as this realm has any real experts yet.

• Second of all, if there really are true experts available, why are they for hire? Granted, I might hire Mark Zuckerberg if he weren’t so busy – but you know what? The few real experts in social media simply aren’t “for hire”.

• My next point is, have we lost track of what social media is actually for? It is for socialising, for goodness sake. I’m not hiring someone to go to the movies. I didn’t hire someone to go out and meet the woman I ended up marrying. Hiring someone to be social for me is simply a dereliction of my social duty – you want to interact as a brand? Go and be social yourself.

• Plus, would you want to be anything but casual on Facebook? Why would you really want a serious, monetised, stretegised, itemised – automatic, hydromatic, grease lightning campaign? On Facebook? Is it because that’s what your customers want? Or because a social media “expert” told you so?

• Let’s face it. Most of the things about social media aren’t that difficult. Answer a question on Facebook. Post a quick tweat in a “hip and happening” style. Don’t be fooled – because I print out a metallic blue name card with the work title of SOCIAL OVERLORD and buy bean-bags for my meeting room, doesn’t make my tweets any more effective than yours.

• If you went to the doctor with a stomach ache, would you want a doctor who only looked at people with stomach aches? What if the stomach ache was related to a condition in your throat? Or heart? Instead, general practitioner – or a TCM doctor – would have holistic training on all conditions. So if you really need an expert, hire a media expert – social or otherwise.

• Think about this seriously. What are you doing? You spend all your week trying to get your staff to stay off social media. Then you pay someone whose main claim to fame is that they’ve spent the last four years wasting their time on it?

• With no disrespect intended, there is a very important reason not to believe my worthy opponent Mr Loh Lik Peng. For him, social media may actually be the right forum. But people, he is seriously cool – most of us are not. He owns The New Majestic Hotel, and Wanderlust, both bastions of serious hipness. In the past I’ve done photo shoots with fashion models in these places: the models looked almost as sexy as the surroundings. This guy was on the cover of CNBC Business Europe; Design Hotels called his one of its “illustrious personalities”.

• He is someone you would not hesitate to bring to Zoukout to introduce hip young things. People, he is not you and I. My point here is simple – very few of us have products seriously worth disturbing people on their occasional stolen moment of fun, in amidst an otherwise dreary day.

• Friends, the internet is a weapon of mass distraction. You and I don’t have the goods to justify disturbing people’s social lives. He does! That is why I – and 99% of the people here – would, and should never hire a social media expert.

• And let’s feel good about that. Let them be cool. As Lester Bangs says in the movie Almost Famous: “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we’re uncool.” Let’s go onto social media and share our uncool lives with each other. And leave the hiring of media experts exclusively to the genuinely cool folks. 

• Self defeating corporate footnote: Luke would also not hire a social media expert, because at Novus Media Solutions, he works with several! www.firestarter.com.sg