I understand all of the hullabaloo about how to tell if your “social media expert” is really all they’re cracked up to be. There are probably at least 25 ways to tell if they’re shills, if not more. But there is one definitive thing that should put all other arguments to rest about whether or not your social media “expert” is qualified to help guide your business.
The Consultant’s Role
Social media is, ultimately, an endeavor that a business must take responsibility for on its own. It can’t successfully be outsourced long term if the company is to truly and authentically steward its own brand. Therefore, the role of the consultant or social media adviser is to educate, teach, and immerse the company in best practices for social media, including integrating social media with other marketing efforts and tying those initiatives directly to related business goals.
Their ultimate objective should be to “teach the business to fish”, becoming the training wheels of sorts while the company works through the challenges and opportunities of their social media implementation. The consultant can and should be working hand in hand with them to work social media into their day to day function and – when all is said and done – make themselves unnecessary and hand over the reins (save ongoing guidance on an as-needed basis, perhaps).
Proof
When it comes down to it, there is only one thing that can testify to a social media consultant’s effectiveness: results.
They can be ROI- or value- based results, qualitative or quantitative, but they have to be articulated clearly in terms of how they advanced a business goal. Period. (And if your consultant says that results and impact of social media are too nebulous to articulate, walk away). Some examples:
- Building a blog that grew in subscribers by a measurable amount each month, quarter or year
- Increasing subscriptions to an e-newsletter, downloads of a white paper, or other content offering based on publicity through online and social media channels
- Improved customer satisfaction ratings once social media tools were implemented along side traditional customer service mechanisms
- Increased visibility in traditional and/or online media placements through the use of social media or optimized press releases or newsrooms
- Creating a following on a corporate Twitter account that led to an increase in leads generated through that channel
It is not enough to merely say that “we set up a Facebook fan page with 2,000 members” or “we created a viral video”. Those aren’t results, those are tactics. The results are what happened in the wake of those initiatives to drive the business forward.
Asking for Help is Smart
Please don’t misinterpret me: I think the right consultant can add exponential value to a business and there are a pile of them right here as contributors to the Daily Fix that can point to how they’ve done just that. And remember that experience with more traditional marketing, communications, and customer service roles in a company adds to a consultant’s ability to translate and apply social media to a client’s unique situation.
You wouldn’t hire a website developer that couldn’t point to successful projects. You wouldn’t hire an accountant that couldn’t handle tax implications or a project manager that couldn’t meet deadlines. When tapping the expertise of a social media consultant, concrete results are the most important criteria you need to consider.
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Good points Amber. It is true that a company should take responsibility for social media marketing and that a consultant should be a coach.
In many cases, however, the company needs someone to help with the actual work of social network marketing, at least for a time.
One other measurement of social media success (other than the ultimate ROI) is engagement. I have seen pages on Facebook with hundreds of thousand fans but very little to engage them. What a waste.
By the way, I use Radian6 and love the tool.
I whole-heartedly agree Amber…
I would probably also add that even if you are trying build these skills and don’t have immediate access to helping serve a corporate brand in social media – try volunteering.
Not just an “internal internship” but actively finding a charity or cause that may need help with their PR or Marketing. Before I entered grad school, a lot of the experience I gained in generating results in social media came directly from such an opportunity.
In addition to just being a really cool thing to do…It’s also giving me a leg up in the job search when it comes to demonstrating results.
Good point. I always explain to clients that some of what they are giving up in media costs will reappear as salary for the internal people needed to sustain their social media efforts.
But in terms of experts, I think if you eliminated the ones without any actual experience in marketing, advertising or PR, you’d find your list slimmed down considerably. Social media is one part of a greater marketing plan and anyone advising your company on that needs to understand the big picture.
Otherwise you wind up with something similar to the very silo’d Web 1.0 scenario of “our web guys” creating something that bore zero resemblance to the rest of the marketing effort, a scenario that still exists today at many companies.
Great article, Amber but Alan you hit the nail on the head. So many “experts” are single threaded as they say. Many also have deep research backgrounds but not actually experience in “doing”. Finding the combination that is fully immersed in all aspects of marketing and with a goal on growing and measuring sales (not just brand awareness) is critical.
What Alan said except add communications to marketing, advertising or PR. We overlook Communications Departments in the business world as a home for social media at our own peril.
However, Alan hits the nail on the head. If the social media consultant doesn’t have business experience in one of these four functional areas, I recommend that businesses not hire them.
Agree completely with everything you said. I think that a pre-requisite for hiring a consultant or agency to do social media work should be that the client DEMAND that they provide training on the tools that will be included in the initiative. If they won’t agree to this, then the consultant/agency shouldn’t be hired, period. I tell potential clients that contact me that they MUST let me include training and that outsourcing their social media needs to someone else is NOT a feasible long-term strategy.
Companies are rightly concerned with the ‘expertise’ of a consultant or agency that they hire to do social media work for them. A great way to separate the haves from have-nots is to ask for training. The have-nots usually won’t want to provide training because they can’t, and/or because they aren’t interested in seeing clients become self-sufficient when it comes to social media.
Great take on this discussion Amber.
While I agree that past performance is a great indicator, we have to remember that we are entering a world without many case studies or rules. Early adopters have set rules that benefit their communities. Future users (and there will be many) will set new rules that meet their own ends. It’s far too early to start thinking about what constitutes a shill or carpetbagger. In my experience, they’re easy to spot. However, every case is unique and no ‘how to’ can point to anything of value. Even metrics don’t answer many of the questions that remain around social marketing today.
I agree that you need to see ROI on a campaign but the deeper issue is exactly who should be teaching this methodology. Too many social media gurus get caught up in being overly corporate but social media is about people – it is about socializing and conversations- people want to converse with other people with similar interests – give the brand a face and you have that – take Matt Cutts (Google for the unschooled) for example he gives the Spam team at Google a face and a figure to interact with and it works – you become too corporate and only present the brand and the company and you are guaranteed failure. Also, I’m just going to say it outright, most of the self proclaimed “social media gurus/experts” out there are neither gurus/experts nor cool and have probably never been or made a brand/company/executive/collective staff a total rock star on any social network. Basically, they are losers that tell everyone they are popular and some believe it while the rest of search for proof. Fact is, the cool kids never give tutorials on how they became cool. Social media is pure social science – it’s how you get along and become a leader in a group. But the rub is – this is in the geek world and all the experts hail from that world rather than from either marketing or social science. geeks are not fit to lead social media campaigns. You need prom queens, plain and simple you need to teach “cool” to have a successful campaign.
@Harry Thanks for the kind words. Let me know if I can ever be of help.
@Alan, Diane and Lewis: that’s precisely what I meant by the sentence that gets a bit lost above, but says that having practical business experience is key. You need someone who can frame this stuff as an evolution of business practice, not upending the world.
@Cory You may very well be right that we’re still figuring a lot out, but results speak for themselves. We can’t keep using the argument that we don’t “know enough” about social media to prevent accountability by those who are even experimenting. Failure is a metric too, and a valuable one. And while I agree that each company has to set their own objectives, we have to start focusing on connecting the mechanisms with the goals in each individual scenario.
Great article, Amber. Always enjoy reading your ideas. This one, of training and turning over the reigns could seem noble and refreshing in contrast to the myriad companies shamelessly asking that they permanently handle the SM business and get paid for it. (Like mine.)
And training seems easier to monetize than ongoing management.
One valid argument against could be that some things, like the quality of content, are beyond training.
The best content, whether it’s a twitter, facebook page, blog, etc., combines a natural, spontaneous, internal feel, with the crackling, magnetic mojo of a facile, outside talent…like yourself. Some companies might want to leave that training wheel on permanently.
This is a comment on Radion 6.
I just started using it and I find it “wanting”. But I also know that tracking social media is in its infancy and need more sophisticated search system than what is currently available.
@Carol – I’d be happy to talk with you further about Radian6 at your convenience to see if I can help. Feel free to send me an email at amber.naslund@radian6.com with your feedback!
“…the role of the consultant or social media adviser is to educate, teach, and immerse the company in best practices for social media, including integrating social media with other marketing efforts and tying those initiatives directly to related business goals.”
AMEN, sista!
You know my story. ‘Nuff said.
Veery nice…