5 "Watch-outs" when looking for a social media "expert"

  

Recently, Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester relayed a post an agency had created on how to detect "carpetbaggers" in social media (and a self-promotional video from another agency and a video of someone reading the original post...). The goal of the agency was to claim that their approach is legitimate and that marcom executives had better watch out for consultants or agencies professing expertise and solutions in social media that they do not have.

For the most part, their list of what to watch out for is the same old list. It covers basics:
"...1) When asked about listening, gives you a blank stare
6) Believes in delivering messages
10) Their blog is less than six months old or has no comments...."

This doesn't make it wrong. There may, in fact, be some marcom executives who are not yet wise to these principles. The list might be stronger if they weeded out the repetition. All of the points about the consultants own social media behavior could be summed up with - "you cannot simply observe social media and be great at it, you need to weave it into your life to be of maximum use to your brand or client."  I actually think their best two points are:

"9) Trots in “social media expert” for sales meeting" -  too many organizations big and small rely on that expert vs. committing to making their entire organization smart about social media-driven word of mouth marketing. This is the natural weakness of independent consultants inside and outside organizations. They are driven to protect their expertise. To truly be successful in applying WOMM to business, you need to build a culture of learning - you have to train everybody to some level of knowledge and expertise.

"23) Thinks social media is about creating content" -  this leads to all sorts of problems not the least of which are ethical issues that threaten the brand. If all you try to do is create "content" to populate search engine results or review databases, you may resort to bad WOMM practices like comment spamming or thinking (eronneously) that authenticity equals truthfulness (you can be truthful and inauthentic and miss the value of WOMM)

5 "Watch-outs" for Social Media
Here are a few other "watch-outs" that marketing and communications executives should be on the lookout for as they look for partners to help them achieve business results via social media:

1. When business people want to know the measureable impact on their business, the social media pundit stammers on about "the obvious value of being in the conversation" yet never answers the question

2. They claim to be "strategic" yet throw out social media tactic after tactic without ever framing what they do in terms of word of mouth marketing (for the record - word of mouth marketing is the strategic purpose of most social media)

3. The consultant tells you what they are not but never what they are or what they stand for - e.g. "we are the antithesis of big agencies; we are the opposite of the social media pundits who just talk and talk..."

4. Portrays social media strategies (WOMM) as the antidote or replacement for advertising or media relations

5. When asked how their WOMM program scales to produce a maningful result, gives you a blank stare...

As someone who has developed a highly disciplined, effective social media-driven word of mouth marketing team and created an agency & client-wide training curriculum, I want to see this year be the year that we get serious and move on from the simple entry-level righteousness of the social media expert.

Tough Year Needs Discipline

This year will be an important one for marcom executives as they wrestle with tough choices about effieiency in a recession and the clear need for innovation via WOMM. Companies will start the year off with one of the most painful choices they can make - layoffs of people. They will need to find partners who understand and have clear experience with innovating via WOMM and traditional marketing. They need partners who will grow their business, help them withstand the recession and only deploy the most effective marketing solutions.

As Geoff Livingston said, what else should be on this list?   

Comments

[Geoff Livingston]

Thanks, John. The unnamed agency is Livingston Communications. Really the post I co-authored with Beth Harte was a silly riff that was a bit of a reaction to all of the new PR and marketing folks suddenly offering social media services in the wake of the economic crisis. Our post was never meant to be anything more than half rant/half humor, but the 140+ comments indicate that we touched a much bigger nerve. Thank you for adding your two cents to the conversation.

[John Bell]

@Geoff - As social media-based word of mouth programs continue to capture marketers' attention as a possible means towards innovating to weather the recession, there are going to be a lot of people jumping into this space. But even before the recession there were a lot of pundits who couldn't apply social media in a disciplined way.

I think this recession will accelerate the weeding out of the social media experts who don't know strategy or how WOMM works with traditional marketing and communications - people who cannot execute, too. The stakes are too high. Marketers at bluechip brands will not take kindly to "experts" wasting their time and money while they struggle with sales and heart-wrenching layoffs.

Your list idea is a good one even if a lark. I just hope we can expand it beyond the core "do they get social media" criteria to include how social media should be used to produce a business result.

[Beth Harte]

Hi John, thanks for highlighting our list in your post today. As Geoff said, it started as a rant/riff...but apparently it did hit a nerve with some 'experts.'

Indeed, the recession will separate the wheat from the chaff and those who truly understand social media will be identified by others, not themselves.

Looking forward to seeing what happens in this space in 2009.

All the best,
Beth Harte
Harte Marketing & Communications

[Jon]

I never thought about the whole recession weeding out the not-so expert carpetbaggers. In the end, the only thing that matters are results, so if knowledge was all you need then most can easily take that title, if provide results oriented execution is important then not a whole lot of experts out there.

http://spatiallyrelevant.org/2009/01/24/what-color-is-your-kool-aid/

The backlash on "experts" is well underway.

~jon