What’s a social media mercenary? Someone you hire to blog, tweet, facebook, or otherwise be your voice on social networks.

I ended up coining this term during a twitter discourse with Jim Alexander (@tweetmaker) about whether or not this practice was good or not, and whether it should be transparent.  The point about social media that I like is that it needs to be both authentic and transparent.

Apparently, many companies hire tweet-makers like Jim to do all of their social media for them. If it is not disclosed, when (not if) it comes out, you will have lost some integrity.

Consumers understand that press releases are written by a firm.  Customer service can be done by an outsourced company – as long as the company is actually delivering service (which today sadly doesn’t happen enough). There are other tasks that can be outsourced.

But the conversation that you have with your customers, the dialog that builds a relationship, should be authentic. And by that I mean, it needs to come from a stakeholder – an employee, an owner, a shareholder, even the owner’s spouse. That’s the voice of the business.

When the CEO hires someone to blog for him, why bother?Just issue press releases. It’s about the same idea. The good blogs from executives offer insight, a story, a look inside, a personal touch. A good example is the Bear on Business blog from Zayo CEO Dan Caruso.

Do you think that Steve Jobs can hire someone to do the Apple presentations? Nope. The Mac-heads would freak out. Their relationship with Apple and Jobs is what gives the company that cult-like feel.

Do you think that Tony Hsieh at Zappos could have outsourced his social media and still built a $1B business?

Dell could probably have outsourced their Outlet twitter sales, but I bet it wouldn’t have worked as well or been tracked as accurately.

Can Rubbermaid outsource its forums and blogs? Probably not because it’s the tone and voice (and continuity) of the blog that keeps readers coming back. They come for the story from the storytellers that they know.

There’s the other side of the coin: companies complain that they don’t do social media because they can’t control the message. How do you control the message by outsourcing it?

I will say that in relationship building, it would be difficult to outsource. And the relationship would be damaged when it comes out that the conversation wasn’t with the manager at company X but their social media mercenary. And it will come out. We live in an age where privacy is disappearing more and more every day. It’s just a matter of time before that brand gets damaged due to a lack of transparency or authenticity.

And for Jim who says that his small business clients can’t find the time: I call bull sh!t. Employees are on social networks all day anyway. As a SM mercenary, my job is to get them all to spend 15 minutes per day on social networks for the good of the company. That’s a little harder than just doing it for them, but you can fish for someone or you can teach them how to fish.  (Of course, there’s more money in just fishing for them).

At the very least, these social media mercenaries need to be transparent. There needs to be a disclaimer that it is the agency not the actual company.

Would you hire someone to go to a business networking event for you? “Hey, Jim, here’s $40, go to the Hotspaces event and meet people for me and collect business cards. Hey, give them my card too.”

Would you hire a stand-in for a cocktail party?  These are the analogies I hear for social networks – cocktail parties and online networking events. How do you substitute?