Read a book about social media marketing and you'll probably get a lot of the same old ideas. Here's a perfect example: if you have a hair salon, take "before" and "after" shots of your customers when they come in, friend them on Facebook, and then tag them in the photos. The idea is simple: you build a photo album of customers, and each time you tag one of them, each of their friends get exposed to your business when the photos appear in their news feed.

It's not a bad idea, but the effectiveness of this kind of strategy wears over time. I imagine that the first humorous beer commercial ever to air on television had quite an effect on its viewers, but when the next beer company that decided to make one too, it didn't work as well. With each copycat, the effectiveness of any particular strategy degrades.

Somewhere, hundreds of advertisers are trying to replicate the success of Old Spice's The Man Your Many Could Smell Like. The reason it worked was because it was new and outrageous. That means when you try to copy it, it's not outrageous and it doesn't work.

There is no formula for getting people's attention; not like there is a formula for computing the Price-Earnings Ratio. It makes sense that you can go to school and get an accounting degree. But marketing? The reason that it's in the business college in most universities and not a liberal arts degree is something I'll never understand.

A good reason to mistrust anyone who claims to be a "social media expert". Even those who come close to expert level are still working it out.