About once a week someone says to me: “we’ve got to find someone to help you do all that social media stuff”. I think they have in mind a junior person who could relieve me of their idea of ‘hack work’, while I sit about and write strategy, or attended corporate golf events.

I’ve seen many clients offload their social media to someone ill-equipped to deal with it. In almost all cases the delegation has failed. In some cases it’s done irrevocable damage to a brand and caused serious legal problems.

Here’s why. Social media is publishing. It's direct communication with the public and your potential customers. It’s also like meeting someone in person. Your organisation has a brief opportunity to make an impression. Your voice and communication must be as professional, well crafted and assured as it is in your company’s advertising. Social media is the media these days. The only difference is that now your advertising needs to be produced faster and more frequently.

Would you leave your 20-year old intern in charge of your company’s advertising campaigns? Nor should you leave them in control of your identity and reputation on the most important communication channels available to you.

Companies who lead the way in social media have teams of professionals generating quality content, crafting copy, running advertising campaigns and managing customer service on social media. It is where your brand, products and corporate culture are being put to the test—and judged.

Social media is maturing fast. It’s no longer acceptable to outsource the responsibility for it to a kid. It is a major marketing activity and part of your corporate identity, voice and brand. Do it well and you give a great impression and sense that your company is proficient, cool and professional. Do it badly, and I don’t want anything to do with you.

Text with a nasty typo? I’m going to judge your quality control (maybe your products are sloppy too). Poor quality imagery? I assume you are lazy and apathetic, or simply have no eye (again, sloppy). And what about the tone of voice? Does your law firm sound like a nightclub? There are a million ways to mess it up.

Messing it up is rarely in the mechanics of posting. It’s not about how often people post (although too frequent seems a bit desperate to me), what time you post (I’m awake at weird hours) or how many followers you have (you can buy them). If your social media content is consistently beautiful, entertaining and inspiring—and I’m interested in what you offer—I’ll be a fan. If not, I have never even noticed you.

Great media content is not created by accident. Content creation is tough creative work that takes technical skill, experience, time and money to conjure from the ether. Invest in it.

Underestimate the importance and skill it takes to do well, and hand your social media to the ill-equipped at your peril. It’s not something everyone can do (even when they express a keen interest). If it matters to you, treat your social media with respect. Engage a professional and expect to pay for the results social media can deliver when done well.

Steroids are banned in sport for many reasons. But they're not exactly banned in social media. They're widely used to drive up Likes, engagement and artificially inflate results.

Today I received an email from a social media agency ('ranked #1 social media agency', apparently). It was like reading a letter from a Nigerian lawyer, who just needed my account details for a large deposit of funds.

For a brief moment I really wanted to engage them for deep cover research on this blog post. But a far better use of my money would be to write about it and warn my clients and colleagues about the mischief instead.

Geoff (let's call him Geoff) promised to take my Instagram page from obscurity to stratospheric success. Included in his email was a graph showing my projected growth in page followers (36,360+) over 12 months using his 'accelerator' package.

I like to think people can see a snake oil salesman coming. But I'm so often surprised. Social media and tech in general is the wild west of snake oil salesmen.

In this case I can predict that Geoff would fill my Instagram account with a lot of fake followers. There are software bots to generate these. There are even vending machines on the streets of Moscow where you can insert your credit card to buy them. These automated bots would then whip along and Like my posts and leave odd generic comments to make me feel good.

The problem with this sort of accelerated growth is that an artificial audience will do next to nothing to serve your business in the long run. You may impress a few people with your high number of followers, but I guarantee these followers won't be in to buy your goods or services any time soon.

Steroids do harm to the health of the athlete in the long run. There's no easy way to win. Cutting corners won't help. You'll have to be patient and do the hard work to succeed. Your business is better off with an engaged group of 200 real and potential clients, than 200,000 fake ones.

Furthermore, if you do engage a professional agency to help you with social media, a largely fake audience causes huge headaches and can limit you in your future online marketing endeavours.

If Geoff get's in touch about your social media, pop him in the trash can where he belongs.