briansolis - Latest Comments in Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

Mari Smith — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:46:00 -0000

Excellent post, Brian. I totally agree with what you say here - we must listen more than talk at least until we get a feel for the culture of each network/community.

People connect with people first and foremost. My motto is "relationships first, business second." And I believe it's all about adding value, giving, sharing resources, being "followable" ... and though I'm not a big metrics measurer, I do see the importance of doing so... or having a formula. For me, my business is through the roof - and I can often pinpoint the exact layers of conversations that resulted in big contracts. Love that!

Cheers,
Mari
@marismith

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

Anna — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:03:00 -0000

great post! I agree that its really important to participate in social media as a person, not as a marketer :)

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

Carri Bugbee — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:28:00 -0000

Love it! You hit all the highlights of what I try to explain to clients piecemeal all the time (to the extent that I think they can absorb it). Thank you!

Now I can send them to your post for further elucidation -- when they're ready. It's a lot to absorb for people who aren't immersed in the culture of social media and social networking.

Frankly, most marketers I know wouldn't even get half of this stuff. Unfortunately, many don't even know enough to know how much they don't know. Consequently, they don't realize that social media represents a paradigm shift of monumental importance.

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

Wonderabby — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:25:00 -0000

"Talk like a person, not as a sales person or message factory." Perhaps this is the most powerful, and relevant statement on this post (or should I say discussion). Too many sales messages bombard us each day, and competing to be the "purple cow" is like a flashlight competing with the sun. Sell without selling, persuade with persuading. How do you do it? Experience teaches you a lot -- and those unwanted reactions actually tell who you a whole lot of what you should, and shouldn't be doing.

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

Marc Meyer — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:26:00 -0000

Interestingly, I did a top 30 experts post on this at

http://tinyurl.com/6pwhbt

In which I said: Some talk it and some walk it, with the majority wearing out the soles in their shoes. I could not agree more with you Brian, except the problem is in the time suck. And to be genuine takes time and effort and stamina with whats involved.But really you should be, and I suggest being, genuine rather than using software to do your work.

BTW, I love Don Lafferty's analogy! Is that really what goes down??

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

violet — Thu, 22 May 2008 00:08:00 -0000

"Social media is about sociology and the understanding that with the new social tools available to us, we can more effectively observe the cultures of online communities and listen to and respond directly to people within the communities"

Good point, sociology does play a part in social media. I also would like to add that this is where anthropology/an anthropologist could come in handy. Anthropologists are ethnographers and ethnographers by profession, observe cultures, participate in the communities, contribute and learn. It is an ethnographer who comes into a community to learn the socio-cultural norms and attempts to become accepted by the community. I think its an anthropologist who is especially sensitive and aware of understanding socio-cultural norms.

I also agree with your tips regarding "un-marketing".
I believe it is crucial for any social media marketer to follow these rules. Social media marketers first must listen before anything else. Being accepted into an online community is crucial to any effective or compelling online marketing campaign.

Great formula as well :)

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

Wakezilla — Tue, 20 May 2008 23:18:00 -0000

Brian,

You wrote this post at 5am. Funny.

Also, wow. You truly impressed me with the dedication and level of detail you spoke to the reader (me).

I welcome your expertise and participation on inSocialMedia.com

Also, would you mind if I reposted some of your content?

Respectfully,

Nelson Bruton

PS...You can sit down now.

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

Adrienne — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:47:00 -0000

I must say I have tried to explain this phenomenon to my elders and people I admire in the marketing world for months and have had a very hard time getting through to them. Your description is perfectly laid out and I will be referring people who ask me about social media to your post. Thank you so much, for writing it.

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

megallagher — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:12:00 -0000

A fascinating post, Brian! You are right; the immediacy of the internet has changed the landscape for the way in which marketing/PR practitioners’ function. Social media is rapidly becoming a core channel in the dissemination of information and must be adopted as a communicative tool. The ‘new paradigm’ you refer to, requires practitioners to construct relationships with customers and potential customers on a personal level. Assimilating into online communities, then, becomes a necessity for those practitioners who want to prosper within the industry.

The Marketing/PR industry needs to focus on customisation and recognise the fact that the internet enables conversations between people that weren’t possible in the era of mass media. This, in turn, will humanise, not demonise, network practices, through recognising that consumers are human beings and not demographic sectors.

You also discuss how there is a lack of social media experts to help us. So, for those who are interested, SHIFT Communications’ Reference guide (see http://www.shiftcomm.com/do... is very useful as it thoroughly demystifies the terminology inherent in social media, and is designed as a Wiki in order to continuously and clearly update practitioners on evolving

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

Tim Wolters — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:32:00 -0000

need to give props to the millenial I quoted. She's a sharp social medialite that can be found on twitter at @alisamleo

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

William — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 03:54:00 -0000

Outstanding post. I often ask myself who these social media experts are. Often times, you hear them called "rockstars"

I wrote about a post about that just the other day, actually.

http://www.socialjump.com/2...

What is interesting though, looking back just 3 days ago when I wrote my post, is that none of the people I identified as "rockstars" are really marketers. They are just people who I felt represented and were using the medium the right way.

Your post clearly identifies the types of things that we as marketers need to be aware of to really be able to call ourselves experts.

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

MST 1948 — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:07:00 -0000

arrgh!! Brian! i rip my hair out everyday...my latest rants on Socialized blog have all been surrounding this issue...also, my latest Tweet says "the future of marketing is...non-marketing!" heh. anyway, i hate to be a generationist..but the divide is huge and the cultural shift has been a major one that marketing hasn't woken up to yet.

will the real social media expert please stand up?

hi, im here.

ps-- i'll be blogging for the ad:tech blog...this will be interesting/frustrating :)

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

Tim Wolters — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:17:00 -0000

Brian,

Amen brother. I saw a tweet the other day from a "millenial" who was complaining about an unwanted advertisement on a site and then how completely lame it was that the advertiser asked how the viewer liked the ad. Marketers need to engage with their customers in authentic ways, ways that feel like real human interaction. Maybe there's a Turing test (ok I'm a geek) for marketers. Anyway, I also wanted to point out that Collective Intellect also does social media monitoring (in addition to Radan 6, etc). And the really interesting piece of our equation is that we pin down who the most important people in the conversations are so you can prioritize your outreach and engagement. We're doing this for a number of companies now and they are absolutely thrilled to be able to shrink down the time it takes to identify, monitor, and engage these communities.

Tim Wolters
CTO
Collective Intellect

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

Laurent — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 18:52:00 -0000

If your time estimate is correct (I believe so), social media marketing is costly/time consuming (I think so though I think there's great reward too at the end). With so much time on marketers hands, the need to cherry pick only hyper relevant conversations to engage in is key. It requires to master the art of finding /scanning/reading/participating within hundreds of communities efficiently. It then must become a daily tasks like reading email! I think most social media expert do that today...but its very few within a mass of folks who don't have a clue on how to do it.

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

Paul Chaney — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:40:00 -0000

OK, since you asked, it's me. I just don't understand why I didn't show up on the Google search? Hmmm... got to use "social media expert" as keywords in my blog posts more often. :-)

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

henrry — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:19:00 -0000

Interesting post. Due to Online PR marketing initiatives it’s not possible to definitively measure whether the press release drove a noticeable traffic and increase in sales.

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

Don Lafferty — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 13:03:00 -0000

This all makes a lot of sense, although I’ll bet it’s because I’m already in tune with some of the softer skills necessary to carry out the interaction required to pull it off, but to someone who doesn’t understand the dynamics, it’s akin to explaining surfing as paddling out into the path of a big wave, standing up on the board and jumping off when you reach the sand.

When instructing my oldest on reversing a car out of the driveway I explained it like this;

You put your foot on the brake and put the car into reverse, keeping your foot on the brake.

Now twist your hear around to the right and then to the left to check for street and foot traffic coming from the left and right behind you while keeping your foot on the brake.

Once you’re sure it’s clear, slowly release pressure on the brake until you feel the car start to move, while looking behind you and swiveling your field of vision left and right.

Let off the brake altogether while continuing to look behind you left and right and softly apply pressure to the accelerator.

Assess the room you have to enter the street left and right so you can decide how quickly you’ll need to get moving forward once you’re in the street while backing the car out at an appropriate rate of speed.

Experienced drivers do all this without thinking about it – intuitively. I think we with experience in navigating the waters of social networks also operate intuitively after a while, based on our personal experience, good and not so good.

The sheer amount of hand holding required by a community manager to ensure a cohesive execution of strategy has got to be mind boggling. As you said, the amount of work can quickly overwhelm a single point person depending on the amount of discussion out there in the world.

So who is the social media expert in the room?

I would bet that almost everybody who reads your blog is an expert when compared to the larger percentage of those in the workplace and almost everyone would be capable of executing a social media based strategy.

The trick is selling one. That takes extraordinary communication skills in addition to excellent social media know-how.

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

Marcel LeBrun — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:09:00 -0000

Brian,

You nailed it. We are definitely entering a new paradigm for cultivating relationships with customers and you describe it perfectly.

When anyone starts to approach relationships with customers this way, it becomes so obvious that this is the right approach if you truly respect them. Top down communication may get messages out there, but it certainly doesn’t build trust & relationships with people - as you said, “...we can no longer push our thoughts at people in order to earn resonance; we have to listen, talk, listen, assess, and contribute value.”

Thank you also for mentioning Radian6. I appreciate that. We are also enthusiastic advocates of this approach to marketing and customer relationships.

Marcel

[note: my original comment appeared and then disappeared as did Geoff Livingston's so I re-submitted]

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

Kristen — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:29:00 -0000

Great post Brian, as always, and thanks for sharing an example of a company who appears to "get it."

The commitment calculator can make it seem a bit overwhelming (in time and resources needed), but that's a great reference list to get the search started.

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

Kin Lane — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:24:00 -0000

Very well presented posting. Nice and casual and gets to the point.

Sent it out to all my social media contractors. It is a great overview and introduction.

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

Jenny — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:18:00 -0000

great post. i learned a lot from it.

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

Dan Thornton — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:16:00 -0000

Good, and interesting post that I'll try and digest a little more before commenting too much.

I do disagree however that ROI can be dismissed as equivalent to metrics for a best friend (or a marriage, or the other examples that are wheeled out).
From a lovely, fuzzy social perspective that may be true, but from a business perspective you'll have a hard time convincing someone to invest 50k in communities, rather than SEO, or banner advertising, if they don't get a measurable return at the end of it all.

Certainly for the next few years anyway, because the number of people that get social media, and are in the position to run/restructure mid-to-large companies is pretty tiny.

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

Brian Solis — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 10:29:00 -0000

Hi Laurent, it's the total number of relevant conversations x total worthy communities x 20 minutes / 60 (minutes)...

a x b x 20 / 60 = Commitment

20 is a variable as it depends on the amount of time it takes a person to adequetely assess the conversation and determine a way to add value. There's also time required for monitoring and responsing to each discussion.

Pat, thank you!

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

pat — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 10:05:00 -0000

Brian an excellent and thoughtful post, thanks

Re: Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?

laurent — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 09:54:00 -0000

Brian
Taking your formula for time, are you saying that if one needs to monitor 1000 communities (blogs/groups/niche social site), and there's 1/2 conversation per day, the time needed is 100 minutes or 100 hours(1000 * 1/2~.20) or something else?