Justin Kownacki, creator and producer of the hit Web sitcom, Something to Be Desired,[61] friend, PodCamp Pittsburgh organizer, and many other things, had a great post[62] questioning what qualifies someone to be a social media expert. Quite rightly, he questioned me about my application of the term expert to my experiences and understanding of the space. In this community, it's important to question, to be critical, and to keep our motives and our expression of these things clear and transparent. This led me to consider the label of "expert" and to parse what it might mean to people seeking information in the social media space.
Hours after reading that post by Justin, I was rereading a part of David Maister's Strategy and the Fat Smoker, an excellent book on how to get people to do the things they know they should be doing. Maister points out that labeling oneself an expert is sending the signal that the expert is in control, that he or she is to be heeded above others, and that the client needs the expert to complete the transaction.
Maister goes on to say that an adviser, on the other hand, is someone in a relationship with the client, someone who wants to offer opinions based on his or her experience, while adding into the mix a level of give-and-take and conversation. An expert, in Maister's parlance, is someone seeking a one-night stand, whereas an adviser is someone looking for romance. (I highly recommend Strategy and the Fat Smoker for anyone interested in leadership and/or service relationships.)
I knew at once that I would change my branding on the sidebar of my web site to say "adviser." My reason is that I agree with Maister's assessment. I believe my interest is in having a relationship with an organization or an individual, one in which we talk about opinions and experience and where I help with potential outcomes. I agree because I am already an adviser to a handful of companies.
Every bit as overused as Web 2.0, the term social media is bandied about all the time. I define social media as "the two-way Web." This includes everything from blogging to video to podcasting to photo sharing and the use of social networks like Twitter and Facebook, for instance. The buzzword has slightly different meanings to different folks.
Some larger media companies make the term synonymous with "user-generated content," which they further view as amateurish, free, and in many ways inferior to "professionally generated content." I don't equate social media with user-generated content. (Further, I don't use the term user-generated content much, as I find that it's often used as a derogatory term.)
Is there a common ground to the term? I think it's one of those areas where we're all still feeling our way through the experience, and therefore we must be ready to question those who are discussing their knowledge of social media.
One place where social media is still on shaky ground is in the application of metrics to various aspects of what we're doing. Podcasters, marketers, PR types, and others struggle with this all the time. Sponsors, clients, and customers of all types want to understand what they're buying.
Podcasters can't accurately report numbers that have concrete meanings. Do we count downloads? Do we count hits on a web page? Do we accept and adjust for the caching of our media such that we can't completely count or aggregate the impact of media we've made? Or do we find ways to make the action/response of the media felt? Christopher S. Penn doesn't exactly care how many people listen to the Financial Aid Podcast.[63] He cares how many people sign up for (and ultimately secure) a student loan, driven by his podcast. That's the purpose of his show: to educate, to inform, to build a level of trust and leadership, but ultimately, to drive people to purchase a loan through his organization. More metrics like this are needed for podcasters and video bloggers.
Empirical data is often the coin of the realm in business conversations. People rightly think that they want to understand the impact of their choices, the return on their investment. They feel comfortable that they understand how traditional marketing campaigns are measured. They believe they understand advertising purchases. When we shift into social media and social networks, even as online spending revenue is going up, we are faced with having to talk about the uncertainties and unknowns of how we measure impact.
Be ready to probe when people offer you empirical measurements of results. There are ways to derive what Julien Smith and others have called "return on influence," and there are means by which people are seeking to understand "cost-per-action-based pricing" instead of the more traditional online model of "cost per click." Be wary of what you hear in this space.
Let's press "pause" on the use of the word expert and instead consider who understands social media in a way that you might learn from their experience or seek their advice and recommendations. Here are a few things to look for in a good social media practitioner—and some things to discount:
We don't know every social network that was ever built or every podcast currently or formerly in production, but we'd better know more than a few.
Social media types probably should be making media of some kind themselves. (I am often criticized for not having a podcast. I counter by saying that I make media like Attention Upgrade,[64] Small Boxes,[65] and other projects.) And I blog every day and then some.
We probably should have some length of experience under our belt, in some form or another. I've been blogging since 1998 or so, when it was called journaling. Long before that, I was into online places like AOL and bulletin board services. I'm newer to podcasting and video blogging (and I have Justin Kownacki and Steve Garfield to thank, two strong influencers and guiding lights in that space, not to mention folks like Daniel Steinberg and others, but don't let me digress here).
We should be relatively "known." I'm not suggesting that popularity in and of itself is important, but I do believe that if you're in social media and not many people know you yet, you might want to socialize some more. (This point is very open to your criticism, so please dig in if you disagree.)
We should be able to make something happen by way of the media we create; in other words, our efforts should be at least somewhat impactful. I believe PodCamp has had an impact and that other things I've done have made little differences here and there.
We shouldn't be afraid of transparency, and we definitely should welcome criticism and debate. If we're always right, we're probably not very open to ideas and new things. And at this point in the game, social media is heavily invested in understanding all kinds of new technologies and their applications.
Beyond that, what would you say qualifies someone to be spouting off about social media? Why do you bother coming to my site? What is your bar for accepting someone as an authority in this space? And do you need to learn only from a so-called authority, when plenty of people are experimenting and discovering advances every day? Beware the snake oil experts in any new technology, and question authority. It's worked as a good test since the 1960s. Why stop now?