Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

rozaniyes — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:50:56 -0000

with the knowledge and experience you have you would be better to get the peak of success, because you have a nice articele

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:44:47 -0000

I shall take the help from http://mashable.com/2008/07... to fire my consultant :)

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

virginiaseo — Wed, 20 May 2009 12:42:35 -0000

Alex, it's like seo to me. A lot of "seo experts" are all about the numbers or hits. Heck, that's the easy part. Traffic to a website does no good without building relationships and sales.

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

Action Jackson — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 08:24:16 -0000

I hate to say it, but you're right on about Twitter. What an annoying, pointless little obsession that's become with some people.

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

Justin Mathews — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:13:45 -0000

Woot--great article bro.

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

Arnie Kuenn — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 20:33:55 -0000

Measure, measure, measure. Plus I love the Twitter smackdown. I just read a great post over at SEOMoz related to branding & social media. Here is the link:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/...

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

Brad — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:59:19 -0000

This sounds like it was written about a few people I know in the PR industry.

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

AxelS — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:39:45 -0000

Awesomness - I'm sure this is 97.3% accurate ;-)

Anyways, would you be interested to co-author a white paper about Online Community Manager's responsibilities? We just setup a wiki to collaborate at : http://communitymanagers.pb...

Thanks for considering it

Axel

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

marita roebkes — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:55:11 -0000

Excellent post! Wish every CEO will share this with his Chief Community Officer ;-)

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

Annie Heckenberger — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:58:06 -0000

Alex: congrats on your first mashable post! A couple thoughts: totally understand/like your stand on community vs conversation but I wouldn't discourage people from understanding conversation is a big part of what online community can be all about. I find that as we move forward in the space and more and more new people come onboard, they aren't familiar with or haven't read "The Cluetrain." I think that's a big problem. People should still learn the fundamentals like dribbling even though they want to score with sexy 3-pt shots. And cluetrain as a fundamental talks a lot about the conversation(s). Conversation was our starting point. Community is the evolution.

Second, someone in comments mentioned metrics. I have little empathy for people who resist social media because they say there are no metrics. Marketers are responsible for defining their metrics specific to the goals they want to reach. Period. There are plenty of monitoring and reach tools available for social media. One I like is Radian6 (not a client, just one I like). I can use Radian6 to my hearts delight, looking at where my campaign or brand is appearing, what people are saying, etc. It's up to me, prior to the campaign launch, to define what I want the campaign to do and which tool I am going to use to analyze my work and see if we moved the needle. So whether that metric is connecting with a community with a call to action or actually creating a new product for them to buy a special way or just sign up for something - I, as the marketer/agency define that.

Looking forward to future posts! (never thought I'd say that...)

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

Ted Shelton — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:59:31 -0000

Hi "bill" - please feel free to email me directly with your concern. Since you are hiding behind an anonymous ID and making a generalized attack it is hard to know whether you have a legitimate complaint. We have 20 great people in our company and have dozens of happy clients for whom we have gone deep into the trenches and done great work. Please give us a chance to understand your complaint instead of broadcasting attacks.

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

Beth Kanter — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:06:32 -0000

Alex:

That's my measure of success as a consultant - does the client have the skills and knowledge to implement the project without me? Was I able to deliver training, coaching, support and strategy guidance so that I am no longer under contract with them. My goal is to build the organization's capacity to do the work.

It takes a constructivist approach - to be the guide on the side and the sage on the stage - so totally agree with Leslie about being guide, not an expert.

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

Leslie Poston — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:07:22 -0000

The extreme number of hall monitor types showing up in the comments of a valid post make me think I need to revisit the issue of rules, experts and social media. I spoke about it once before (http://uptownuncorked.com/2... but now I may elaborate further. Food for thought.

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

Tom O'Brien — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:06:14 -0000

All these comments got me thinking - so I put up my own blog post expanding my thought above.

http://tinyurl.com/4nucc8

TO'B

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

Ed — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 09:10:45 -0000

Yes, yes and yes!

Ages ago I started writing a post about why I was a community person not a social media consultant but I became afraid that I would come across all curmudgeonly and reactionary (which maybe I am) when everyone else was being evangelist and missing the important parts of Community (with a big c).

Ta!

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

Stefan — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 08:52:24 -0000

Alex: Excellent post â€“ matching our experience exactly.

Can still recall the often referred to anonymous something "out there" that would be responsible for each and anything, but not her.

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

Scott — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:54:21 -0000

Jason, any consultant who has had any success should know that its not them who's going to make it happen. Its really the product that drives the campaign. I'd be more wary of consultants who take on a new client with no concern over the quality of the product. Without a good product social media just won't work for you. I'd keep my eye on the consultants who are picky about their clients.

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

rajf9598 — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:21:03 -0000

Bingo, dead on bullseye

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

Beth Kanter — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:13:58 -0000

Alex,

There are two possible solutions.

a.) Some professional certification or standards. Ha, can you imagine a field wide discussion on the core skills, competencies, and knowledge - and then having people take some sort of test for certification? You know, like windows server certification, etc.

b.) Clients need to know how to do due diligence. That they would do this for any consultant - check references, look at experience, get at least two quotes, etc.

As a consultant - I vet any inquiry - to make sure that it isn't just tool driven and that shoe fits - the social media shoe. I've even told some potential clients - no you don't need a social media strategy - you need x first.

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

Liz Strauss — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:04:55 -0000

Hi Alex,
I agree. That's http://www.successful-blog.... the first in a series. More coming. I have the same concerns as you do. Visible benchmarks make difference. I'm with you on that.

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

Beth Kanter — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:28:48 -0000

Here's something to consider for a follow up
http://www.successful-blog....

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

Rock Star Information Architec — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:29:29 -0000

I am sending this article to the potential client who asked me to give them a list of tools to make their site more "social". I sent an assesment of i.e. You need a usability study, web 2.0 look

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

Kristin Maverick — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 17:59:58 -0000

Great post. I work in PR and while our company is building out a social media consulting practice, we are obviously also facing the question of whether or not to partner with these "social media consultants" It's a gray area around if it's worth it or not. Thanks for pulling the list!

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

Yael K. Miller — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 17:36:55 -0000

Alex, great post for both sides: consultants and companies. Now I have to go away and think about "conversation" vs. "community."

Re: How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant

Eddie Codel — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 17:35:30 -0000

The first clue that "ur doing it wrong" is even the consideration of hiring someone who calls themselves a 'social media consultant'. Don't be fooled by the hype! Social media is such a nebulous non-term that means too many things to too many people. Are we talking about collaborative web applications? Or the interactions between people who use them? Hey, I'm leaving a comment on a blog! That makes me a 'social media practitioner' and if I do it enough, an 'expert'. That'll be $500 an hour please!