CopyDiva

Here’s a data point. I was at a Business Marketing Association meeting last week, talking to an agency principal who’s recently started using a social media monitoring service — the name of which I frankly can’t remember (I hadn’t heard of them before anyway). He had also demo’ed one of the bigger players in the space as well, but chose this new vendor because he liked the user interface better. In his mind, the actual data collection were comparable amongst all the vendors he looked at.

His need was not focused on real-time data — he needed brand-related data, which any of the vendors have, some of it real time, some not, some more robust and complete, some with more sources available.
What I wonder, from this very unscientific singular data point: Are measurement and social media monitoring services losing differentiation? Are they all delivering the same promise, or is it time for these folks to really work on that differentiation among the brands?

Certainly, there are differences — in everything from data quality to the analytics. But, are the vendors in this space doing a good job of letting the market know their differences? Do they need to at this point, or is the market big enough for continuing generic explanations of what social media monitoring or listening services offer?

Here’s my every now-and-again list of posts that’s I’ve liked and followed recently:

• I have heard many people talk about how every company should have a blog, which I really disagree with. Seems BL Ochman and I follow the same line of thinking.
• Discussions of measurement and ROI abound, both in the context of scalability (and here) and justification of paying for social media engagement.
• And yet others on measuring Word-of-Mouth and standardizing metrics there as well.
• Ways to bucket social media technologies.
• Should corporate communications people show their true colors when engaged online, or does that deflect from “the brand?”

A couple of us decided that it was about time the Boulder/Denver area had regular social media meetups, so we’re taking the plunge and setting up a first gathering. This is happening on September 23rd, at 5:30pm upstairs at the Wynkoop Brewery in Lodo in Denver. We’ll probably start off with some low-key shmoozing and drinking, so, feel free to come even if you can’t make it until 6 or 6:30pm.

So what’s a social media club? Really a chance for marketers, bloggers, business people and general fans of social media to gather, share knowledge and ideas and commune away from the computer. Come join us!
Here’s the link to RSVP on Facebook or if you’re not a Facebook fan, you can use this link instead. Interested in finding out more about Social Media Club? Visit the SMC web site.

Though there seem to be two a week that are “must be there” conferences — this week, for example, the Shop.org Annual Summit in Vegas and Web 2.0 in NYC — I was glad to come across this helpful list today, from Paul O’Brien:

1. Search Engine Strategies (SES)
2. Pubcon (WebmasterWorld)
3. ad:tech
4. eTail
5. Search Insider Summit
6. Affiliate Summit
7. Shop.org
8. Online Market World
9. Direct Marketing Association
10. eMetrics Summit
11. Search Marketing Expo (SMX)
12. OMMA Expo
13. Internet Marketing Conference
14. SXSW - which you should attend just because
15. iMedia Agency Summit & iMedia Summits
16. PPC Summit
17. MarketingProfs
18. American Marketing Association (AMA)
19. Online Marketing Summit
20. MIXX Expo
21. Media Relations Summit
22. ACCM (DMA)
23. DM Days (DMA)
24. Searchnomics
25. ClickZ Specifics
26. Internet Retailer
27. Web Analytics Association Base Camp
28. Next Generation Marketing
29. eRetailer Summit
30. New Marketing Summit
31. IAB Events
32. MarketingSherpa’s Email Summit
33. Apartment Internet Marketing - really!
34. Frost & Sullivan Marketing World
35. T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
36. Catalog & ECommerce Club
37. Blog World Expo
38. eComXpo

The other day my friend Barry called me. This is a very talented and smart guy in the events production business — he’s the guy you want to call to create fantastic corporate events — sales meetings, large trade shows, etc. He had questions about social media, because he still wasn’t getting how social computing tools might be important to him. To quote him as directly as possible: “Why do I want to Twitter? It just seems like a distraction.” Indeed, it can certainly be that. But, when put in the right context, even Barry understands how he can use social media and social computing tools (more on that after this upcoming related thought).

One of the biggest issues I have right now with all the PR and marketing folks who are talking about how to use social media for business and communications is that the advice and ideas are so general, it’s really difficult for your average business owner or corporate marketer to get a handle on how the advice applies to them. For example, this from last week’s NYTimes, or even this from Chris Brogan’s blog, which both discuss Twitter. These are very general strategies that may or may not be appropriate or helpful to the vast majority of people in business.

The key to remember about all things social media, particularly as they apply to marketing and PR, is this: they are tools. Not all tools are going to work for every company. Social media tools — communities, blogs, forums, update platforms like Twitter and Friendfeed — are also for selective use. If you get out of the “I must jump on board now with social media!” bandwagon, then you will give yourself the opportunity to explore HOW these tools could help you in business.

For Barry, I suggested he could find certain tools helpful for organizing around events, such as setting up a Friendfeed group around a particular conference to generate discussion for those attending or presenting. Or, setting up a short-term Twitter account to broadcast announcements to those who are attending, update room changes and speaker changes, etc during the conference as a better and quicker method of online updating than email.

Putting the tools in context helped him relate to these tools from the mindset of his business — not just from a business promotion perspective, but more importantly, how social computing could enhance the service he provides to his customers. 

Some of you may know that I am in the throws of a job search — well, I’d call it something more like “an epic adventure to find the company and crew that’s excited about what I want to do, wants me to do it with them and get paid for it.”

Being that I spent many, many years as a consultant, I think I am morally opposed to looking for a job. This is because I am not just looking for a place to go, do work, and come home. If I am going to spend the majority of my waking hours somewhere, shoot, I ought to like the people and the challenges.

When I was doing more consulting, my approach to finding new customers was two-fold:

1. Look for companies I wanted to do work for, then pursue them
2. Network with existing customers I enjoyed working with to find new customers

This approach (once I built up a decent collection of clients) suited me and worked quite well. I did very little else to find new customers.

I am using this same approach in looking for a new opportunity - connecting with associates via LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, as well as through my local connections in pursuit of the next landing place.

What I will say about this approach is that even though online connections make it a whole lot easier to do the research, the process is quite exhausting. Unlike John McCain, I try to do a little bit more vetting of potential employers. And, since I am not going through the typical channels (HR, big impersonal web site) to get noticed, I sometimes have to go through the preliminaries a few times before I hit on the right person.

Fortunately, I have met some very nice people in my career who are so willing to connect me with people, so I have no lack of leads and connections. My location — the Boulder/Denver area of Colorado –can be a problem, though. Much of the work I am interested in is taking place in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Boston and sometimes Chicago or Dallas. I do get interest, but the remote thing has been a stopping point along the way. Which is funny to me, because the work I am looking to do — the work I do — is mostly done online, with the occasional conference or show or client/customer visit.

For some companies, the remote idea really isn’t an issue, especially once they realize how disciplined I am (and hey, if you are one of those and are looking for someone with my talents, please get in touch).

I am doing some messaging work for one such company right now — great people, distributed organization and great products.

In the social media realm, it makes no sense to me that you want that person in the same physical location. Sure, it helps to visit the home office, and talk to your coworkers. But, for someone like me, I can get a whole lot accomplished outside the office.

Image via Wikipedia I am not certain why the viddler link won’t embed properly, so here’s just a link to Merlin Mann’s quite hilarious session where he makes fun of basically every poser-thought-leader-whiz-bang-social-platform possible: