Social Media Expert or Wannabe?

by Mike Myatt

Determining whether someone is a social media expert or a just another wannabe can be a difficult task for the typical consumer. There is a tremendous amount of noise out there being created by a plethora of "consultants" professing expertise in what I refer to as the new social sciences: personal branding, social networking, social media marketing, etc. I just did a Google search for the term social media expert and had more than 96 million returned search results... give me a break. So my question is this: what constitutes a "social media expert," and how do you tell the posers from the players? Which of these professed miracle workers are true professionals, and which ones are simply attempting to gravy-train a rapidly growing market niche in pursuit of a quick buck?

Let me begin by dispelling a popular myth oft espoused online - It seems to be fashionable of late to state that there is no such thing as a social media expert. The thinking (albeit flawed thinking) of those who hold this opinion is that social media is so new, and so rapidly evolving, that there simply could not be any real experts.

My answer? Ridiculous... Every industry has experts regardless of maturity of life-cycle. In fact, many of the real innovators and experts are those early adopters doing the heavy lifting and the ground breaking. There are experts in every industry and at every stage of maturation. Some early experts mature as the industry grows, and others fall by the way side because they don't keep pace giving way to new generations of innovators building on what the first generation of experts created. The issue is not whether experts exist, as they most certainly do. The issue is finding them among the hordes of pretenders and wannabes.

I'm going to cut right to the chase and give you six things to beware of when attempting to discern the true professional advisers capable of delivering a certainty of execution, from the rogues and scoundrels simply looking to separate you from your money:

1. Beware the Part-Time Expert: My father has an old saying that I've found to be very accurate over the years: "part-time efforts, yield part-time results." If the person seeking your business has a day job that constitutes something other than the services he or she is pitching, run for the hills. If your potential advisor is moonlighting then they really have no business asking for your business.


2. Beware the Shoemaker without Shoes: Your position should be one of "don't tell me... show me." If your would-be social media guru cannot be found online, doesn't blog, tweet, or is invisible on the major social networking platforms you might want to rethink their qualifications. Important Caveat: the mere existence of a blog, YouTube channel, LinkedIn profile, Facebook account, or a Twitter page doesn't guarantee competence... any idiot can amass thousands of followers on Twitter just by following everybody and their brother, so look for someone who has amassed a quality list of followers, who has more people following them than they follow, and who actively engages with their followers.


3. Beware the Expert without Clients: No referenceable clients equals zero credibility. It's one thing to show you their own work, but quite another to show you demonstrated success on behalf of paying and satisfied clients.


4. Beware the Expert without Industry Recognition: If your so called expert isn't published, doesn't speak, lecture or teach, doesn't have a column, hasn't won any awards, etc., then they might not be a true expert.


5. Beware the Expert too Aggressive in their Pursuit: There is a big difference between professional follow-up and desperation. Let me be blunt... most professionals at the top of their game haven't made a cold call in years. In fact, even in this down economy they typically have more business than they know what to do with. If your world-beater of a consultant is chasing you down like a hungry dog after the meat wagon then you may want to take pause.


6. Beware of Bargain Basement Expertise: In most cases the reality is that you get what you pay for... True expertise doesn't come cheaply, but is well worth the investment. Few things in business will get you in as much trouble as not getting advice and counsel when needed, or worse yet, getting poor quality or incorrect advice. I would much rather pay an expert a larger fee for 30 minutes of their time and get what I need rather than pay someone $50 dollars an hour who is faking it until they can make it... Questionable advisors will take much longer to get from point A to point B (if they get there at all), and will likely cost you more money at the end of the day when contrasted with true professionals.

If you need help in integrating social media into your business I would recommend the following individuals (some you may know and some you may not) as they all pass the litmus test mentioned above. Those listed below are in no particular order of preference and you can rest assured they are not "info-product" sales people masquerading as social media professionals, but they are in fact the true subject matter experts who can get the job done:

• Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) - Chris is smart, approachable, innovative, has a high degree of integrity, probably the hardest working man on the planet, and a heck of a nice guy. I've enjoyed every interaction I've had with Chris, and he has earned my trust and respect.


• Mack Collier (@MackCollier) - I don't know Mack personally, but have enjoyed reading his candid and ever straight foward opinions online. Mack is well respected and his the loyalty of his followers more than speak to his capabilities.


• Lee Odden (@LeeOdden) - I've known Lee for several years (before he was rich and famous). In fact, in a prior life as a corporate executive Lee was the consultant I chose to place on retainer. He is smart, seasoned and delivers on his promises.


• Amy Martin (@DigitalRoyalty) - I guess the moniker Digital Royalty says it all... Amy represents some of the biggest names and fastest growning brands online. Nothing bodes as well for an agency as success, and Amy has plenty of pedigree in that department.


• Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) - Ashton combines his celebrity status, a fascination with social media, and a disarming and ever inquistive intellect to head one of the fastest growing social media agencies on the web.


• Liz Strauss (@lizstrauss) - Liz is well known for her approachability, friendliness and candor. She also happens to be one of the savviest bloggers and social media consultants online.


• And if you're slumming @mikemyatt - nuff said...

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Mike Myatt, is a Top CEO Coach, author of "Leadership Matters...The CEO Survival Manual", and Managing Director of N2Growth.

Who are your Trust Agents?

An interview with Chris Brogan

by Mike Myatt


I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Chris Brogan. Chris is the President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency. With the market being awash of so called social media "experts," Chris, who would never refer to himself as such, is absolutely the real deal. In addition to running a successful agency, Chris has reached celebrity status as a blogger, social media advisor, and most recently as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of "Trust Agents".

If you want to see Chris at work, just follow him on Twitter where his followers (now numbering more than 100,000) represent one of the most fiercely loyal and engaged communities on the web. However, what I admire most about Chris is that with all his success he has remained one of the true nice guys in the business. On with the interview...


The world of social media has not only become big business, but it's also become one of the most crowded niches in today's business world. What has been the thing that differentiates you from the legions of other social media advisors?

I don't try to compete with other social media types. Instead, I try to work with companies on ideas that improve their business communications efforts. My background in social media is 11 years long and growing. My background in online community participation and then leadership starts in the mid-80s. So, instead of being a marketing professional who figured out social media, I'm a social media native who learned some things to help people do vibrant things with their marketing and internal communications.


What inspired you to write "Trust Agents"?

I'm working on building out information that others can use to empower their own efforts. Blogs are great, but the idea of a book was that people could share it with their colleagues, their bosses, their clients, whoever needs to know. It's a chance to share the bigger ideas of what I think works underneath the movement of using social media, and to give people much more than the 'which tool is cool' type stuff I'm reading mostly these days.


How is social media impacting your clients?

My clients realize that these tools allow people to be human again, that we can have a face on the brand. There are plenty of opportunities for people to build relationships. For example, one of my clients, Citrix Online (who do GoToMyPC, GoToWebinar, etc) were looking to reach more people interested in the mobile and distributed workforce. We created workshifting.com, which is a group blog that engages people without being any kind of an ad for their product. In fact, nearly none of the posts have anything to do with their products directly. Instead, we write about the kinds of challenges facing people who workshift for some parts of a week. My other clients, Cisco, Microsoft, Sony Electronics USA, etc, are all enjoying the chance to connect with people in a much more personable level.


Up to this point, can you point to any single defining moment in your career?

I'm not sure I've had my most defining moment. Personally, hitting both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller's list for my ideas was great, but as my clients go, or in my overall business, I haven't really hit my biggest success just yet. My clients are happy and have all kinds of appreciative things to say, but I don't feel like I've really taken things high enough or deep enough or successful enough.


How do you gauge your success on a day-to-day basis?

On a day to day basis, my sense of success comes from trying to be as responsive as possible, to the most people possible, and from working on delivering actionable ideas to people for their efforts (be those clients, or readers of my blog). Any day I can help someone move the needle forward is a good day for me. Working with big clients gives me the chance to try big ideas, and when we can see some signs of success, that's what matters the most to me.


What is the toughest part of your day?

Great question. Not being able to respond fast enough to everything is my cross right now. I've over 129 unprocessed emails right now collected over the last few days. I'm traveling so much and working some very long hours, and very few of them are in front of a computer to answer email, so I'm frustrated but trying to accomplish more every day. I'm re-reading Leo Babauta's The Power of Less to try and improve that all the more.


If you could give any advice to our readers what would it be?

Be helpful, be consistent, be everywhere. I'm doing everything I can to equip people to do new things with their business goals, but I feel this advice is timeless and yet timely. We've somehow become selfish, as businesses and as people, and my goal is to help empower people to think about others as much as they can, and to derive sustainable business value from doing it.


What's next for Chris Brogan?

I'm working on editing my second book, which will be a much more typical 'about social media' book, and working on the proposal for the third book (my second with Julien Smith) which will be a shift from where "Trust Agents" left off. We're writing about how human business works, and what we believe will be the DNA of disruption. It should be quite different from "Trust Agents", and yet, in compatibility with what we've written there.


Conclusion

As you can tell from the interview, Chris is focused, smart, and totally engaged with his market. You'll be hard-pressed to find someone who models the definition of customer-centric like Chris does. Thanks for sharing Chris...

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Mike Myatt, is a Top CEO Coach, author of "Leadership Matters...The CEO Survival Manual", and Managing Director of N2Growth.

Run Your Business Like a Life

by Matt Heinz

For many of us, business and life - personal and professional - blur together on a regular basis. But the idea of running your business (or your career) like a life is a good one. Chris Brogan wrote about this in his newsletter this morning, and I've included some excerpts below. Worth a quick read:

In writing "Trust Agents" with Julien, I've been building more and more information up around the idea of being human at a distance, and about the way human-shaped business works. One thing I believe: that lots of situations in business feel a lot like relationships, and vice versa.


Think of Everyone as a Relationship

Customers are a relationship. Prospects are, too. Coworkers are those people we spend more time with than many of our extended relatives. But do we treat everyone as if we're in a relationship with them? I don't mean that you have to kiss everyone (though hugging wouldn't be all that terrible, would it?), but I do mean that if we considered this, even every once in a while, our business experiences (from communication to interpersonal interactions) would improve. For instance, we don't spam our family.


Make Everything Into an Improvement Project

At home, we carve up things into projects. We paint the deck. We decide to build out a new sun room. We replace the living room furniture. Some of our projects are recurring: vacuuming, laundry, meal preparation.

Business runs the same way, even if your job is made up of recurring tasks. If your role is director of marketing, the overarching goals of the organization are to drive more awareness and translate that to sales (let's say). Why not find ways to chunk that into projects: email marketing improvement, online presence management, blogger outreach efforts, print campaign streamlining, integration efforts, etc. Can you see how that "project" mindset changes business?


Integrate Your Presence and Profile

Online, I'm often asked the question as to whether one should have a work and a business profile separate from one another. I say no. Except in extreme cases (your fetish art hobby doesn't work well with your day care center job, maybe), I believe that our profiles and how we conduct ourselves online should be an integrated thing.

This might require some help from friends. You might need to request that your Facebook friends not tag you in photos from the party where you did the kegstand in your band costume. It might mean having to do some untagging when one of your friends tags you anyway. But I think it's worth it.

Social software allows for a more enriched view of our interests, our pursuits, our goals. By connecting on various sites as an integrated whole, we treat people more like humans, and we operate human-shaped businesses.


Will it Work?

You might be wondering if any of this improves the bottom line. My answer? Yes. Does it work for every organizational culture? No. But here's a trick: culture is a non-physical consensual reality that only exists because others perpetuate it. Inserting new programming into the culture, is similar to hacking software (or our immune system): appear externally to be compatible with the culture, and then inject small traces of the new programming into the system. Defend against the antibodies, and soon, you're in.

Hack your workplace, friends. You deserve it.

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Matt Heinz is principal at Heinz Marketing, a sales & marketing consulting firm helping businesses increase customers and revenue. Contact Matt at matt@heinzmarketing.com or visit www.heinzmarketing.com.