Ok, so I read the post referred to by a few around Twitter yesterday, and it’s a good post: http://www.skelliewag.org/why-no-one-is-a-social-media-expert-895.htm
I said in my earlier post that we needed to define our expertise, and Skellie makes some good points on why it’s simply not possible to be an expert in social media, mainly because the term is too broad.
So here’s my addendum to my ‘Manifesto’ (yes, I know it’s really not _that_ important!):
We will define our expertise – Let’s try to define what exactly we know, and consequently what our expertise is in helping customers use social spaces effectively. Here is a starter list for how we might pigeonhole ourselves:
Specific Social Medium Geeks (Experts): This person knows a specific social medium in depth. For example a Twitter geek will know all of its foibles, its mechanics, its development path, its usage statistics and users, its conventions and its tools. This person will be able to tell you who is verging on 2 million followers, what the latest and best Twitter tools are, which brands are making the biggest splash on e.g. Twitter. They may have spent time with the founders, and are certainly incredibly tuned into what the API does and doesn’t do. They will understand in detail how spammers work and the tricks for getting large amounts of followers in a short amount of time. They will know ‘best practice’ things like "Don’t fill 140 characters, leave room for your message to be retweeted in a single click", and they’ll advise you on things like researching your hashtag before you start using it and other classic “gotcha’s” of the medium. If I wanted to develop a Twitter game, this is the person I would turn to for advice on the technicalities and mechanisms of that game and what tools are available to me, what’s the best URL shortening service to use, and so on. They may have other skills on this list, but don’t assume they know how to write good copy that engages users, or that they truly understand the psychology of what makes users do what they do, that’s best left to….
Behavioural or Cognitive Experts: This person has a background in psychology, ethnographics, ergonomics, or another human factors discipline of some kind. They will have made a study of what makes a particular digital social space work. They will know about things like Intermittent Variable Reinforcement (or Reward) and Continuous Partial Attention, they might understand Computer Game Theory and their principles and observations can be applied across a whole range of social media. They will probably be able to tell you as much about the behaviour of people at a social function as they would about crowd-sourcing on Facebook. If I were wanting to develop a Twitter game, I would turn to this person to help me understand how best to motivate users to participate. At EMC Conchango, this person would most likely be one our Experience Architects.
Brand Messaging Experts: This person knows how to craft the most beautiful, or funny, or engaging messages into 120 characters (yes, 120, not 140. Remember to leave room for Retweeting!). They may be a copy writer, an author, a comedian, or a PR person. Either way, they have to have made serious observations about the culture of the specific groups they are targeting, and what will be considered to be appropriate, acceptable and desirable messaging in the social space in which they want to operate. In developing my Twitter game, I would turn to this person to help me write the game, the language, the tone of voice, and to help me craft potentially complex messages into 120 characters or less. I would ask them to create a plan for engagement. I would use this person to work out how I, in a Twitter discourse, turn a game participant from casual observers into engaged advocates? Again, their expertise can flow across media, but if I want to trust them on Twitter, I want to know that they understand the audience, the Twitterverse generally, but more specifically, my particular target audience. At EMC Conchango, this would be one of our copy and content team, and in other companies might be a relationship or brand marketing expert.
Measurement Experts: These amazing people are driven by numbers. They will have found the research, or they may even have created it in the first place, that tells them the value of a follower for a particular type of brand or company. They will be able to determine from analysis what the optimal time of day is to get a Tweet seen by the widest possible audience. They will be able to advise you on what is considered to be a mean level of Tweets per day to ensure you’re not creating too much noise that gets you un-followed. All of this will be based on empirical evidence that is hard to argue with. This is what marks them out from everyone else on this list. We probably all have an opinion on most of this, but only they can advise for certain what the data really says. In the context of my Twitter game, I’d ask them to predict what numbers of users I could hope for, the optimal level of Tweets per day, and they would set up the measurement criteria that would form the basis of my success / KPI analysis at the end of the campaign/game.
Experience Planners & strategists: Aside from this lot, we will also have digital breadth experts (if that’s not a paradox) for whom social media is simply another digital channel. They will be an observer of wider trends in digital consumption, and usage, and will have pockets of knowledge and expertise at a surface level of many of the areas of expertise above as well as across all other digital media. In the context of EMC Conchango, Experience Planners are the people who help establish the channel mix and the overall digital communication strategy and objectives as well as being an interface to knowledge of other campaigns and agencies relating to the brand for whom we are working. For my Twitter game, I would use them to help me establish the overall idea, how it fits into a wider context of the digital touchpoints of the brand, and what we are hoping to achieve.
Of course, none of us can be pigeon-holed easily. We all overlap to some degree, but we should amongst the list above find the particular heartland that we really thrive in. i.e. what our ’element’ is, to use Sir Ken Robinson terminology, which is to say that when we are ‘in our element’ we add most value.
Does that resonate with any of you? How would you classify yourself? I’ve looked back at Skellie’s post and I think the different types of experts listed there fit into this classification. So next time I meet someone at a social media conference, can I ask you which of these you are? Can you answer? If not… send me some more!