If you work in marketing and the Internet space as I do, you’re inundated daily with perspectives on the unfolding revolution of ‘conversation marketing’. We’re told TV is dead (though viewship numbers seem to contradict this). We’re told advertising is dead (though ad revenue remains the default – and often only – monetizing strategy among most web 2.0 platforms). In short, we’re fed a lot of attention-garnering hyperbole. The hyperbole works too by making everyone frothy and excited. Join the revolution!

A recent headline seemed to deliver to the pundits of conversation marketing the kind of hard, quantifiable ROI their business clients clamor for. Essentially the headline stated that Dell made $3MM in revenue from Twitter (in terms of hyperbole balancing, its worth noting this is over two years and a sliver of Dell’s overall revenue). This headline and ‘case study’were slapped on many a Social Media Marketing presentation. Cruise around Slideshare or listen in on pundit speeches. You’ll see this headline show up again and again.

The trouble is that the assumptions that come alongside that headline are not supported in the article. Dell’s success had very little to do with what Twitter is known for – namely microblogging and realtime conversation. Here’s why: In mentioning Twitter and $3MM in revenue in the same headline, it could be assumed that the revenue came from a dialogue between Dell and its customers.

However, if you read the article you’ll learn that basically Dell used its Twitter account (DellOutlet) to push coupons and purchase incentives out to the people following it (of which there are over one million). The reality is, DellOutlet’s use of Twitter in this instance is as Sunday Circular 2.0 not Conversation Marketing or even ‘social’media. What’s social about signing up for coupons?

Twitter isn’t being used for dialogue here, its being used as a distribution pipe no different than other media like catalogs, emails or sunday circulars. Sure, you can tweet back your gratitude and the Dell folks will politely acknowledge and thank you, but really, calling that a conversation feels like a stretch to me. What we’re seeing is offline tactics following people as they move online.

Simply being online – even on Twitter or Facebook – doesn’t make it Conversation Marketing.

That’s ok. What’s happening today is an evolution, not a revolution and while the paradigm may be shifting, it moves slower in the real world of human behavior than it does in trade publications and the hype-addicted blogosphere.

I like to point out to people that when the automobile was invented it was called the ‘horseless carriage’. This is important. Without some past frame of reference, new technologies are hard to understand and adopt. So using a new technology to accomplish an old tactic is transitional, it’s a stepping stone toward that great and enlightening revolution we’re being promised every day.

No more should we dismiss new technology as ‘just more of the same’than should we jump on the bandwagon and mindlessly make connections that aren’t there. Dell’s ‘monetizing’of Twitter is a traditional model applied to a new distribution pipeline. Let’s call it what it is because it’s still a step forward. Twitter is helping Dell make money and that’s great. But this is not a case study for Social Marketing or Conversation Marketing or whatever you want to call it.

I get concerned about the continual stream of grandiose claims and dramatic revolutionary language thrown around so easily among social media pundits. They are setting very high expectations – sort of like the pundits of the ‘dot-com era’did back in the day (and we know how that turned out).

People will listen initially. Dramatic talk of revolution stirs us all. They may even experiment which is a necessary step. But if these experiments lead to disappointment because the revolution being promised is oversold and underdelivered upon, then those same people will begin to tune us out. Worse, they may start tuning us out just as we’re reaching a point where its worth listening. That’s happening now. Just as Web 2.0 is beginning to be figured out a little (a.k.a. someone made three million buckaroos with it!), there’s a backlash because too many people are promising too much change and benefit far too soon. And of course it’s all laden with jargon and bullshit language.

We owe it to ourselves as an industry and as business people, to speak frankly. We should acknowledge successes (and $3MM in revenue certainly is) but also be careful not to overstate them. Exaggeration or misattribution of cause and effect creates problems. Hyperbole is undermining the advertising business because over-promising gets outed online quickly. Promising revolutionary change is undermining political agendas as our President promised more than any mortal can deliver, leading to disappointment. Are we doing the same, overselling and over promising, in the name of landing clients? I think sometimes at least, we are, and it’ll come back to bite our industry in the butt. After the dot-com crash it took years (which is lifetimes online) for the business world to take Internet marketing seriously again.

Less spin, more straight talk. That’s the paradigm of Social Media. Industry experts would do well to practice what they preach.