One Flew Over the Cubicle's Nest

Killing off the Social Media Specialist

Will social media specialists go the way of the blacksmith? Yes, if you believe Steve Rubel, the well known Edeleman blogger. He believes the social media manager will be extinct in a few years. Where will they go? Absorbed into the corporate marketing and PR machines, says Steve.

Steve is one of my favorite bloggers and always seems to be on top of the latest trends.  But this is one I'm hoping he misses.

Steve's argument is that PR professionals at most companies will soon be well equipped to manage social media activities as well as a lone-wolf specialist. These skills aren’t rocket science and can be easily picked up by a savvy inhouse communications manager. Most companies don't have the "luxury" of these specialists when instead they can sweep it up into existing PR or marketing organizations. 

I think this would be a huge mistake.

Social media requires different skills and mindset than PR--in fact, it's the antithesis of PR. Ever hear of a PR manager who really believes in letting go of the messaging or allowing employees free reign to engage in wide-open conversations?  PR is about message control and spin. Don’t try to disguise it as anything else. Public relations and “transparency” are like oil and water.

There’s no reason we can’t continue to have separate positions for social media marketing managers or strategists, and that public relations organizations can't be involved of course. As social media strategist and Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang points out, we already have specialized marketing managers in large corporations sorted by industries, mediums, and channels (ex: web marketing, search marketing, event marketing).

Here's what really bothers me.

Quit Fighting it--Write it (NY Times Blogging Tips)

The NY Times posted a list of blogging tips  from veteran bloggers, some well known (Mark Cuban), some not ("So You Want to be a Blogging Star). Some of these are a little overly simplistic--example, Cuban says to "blog about your passions. Don’t blog about what you think your audience wants. Post because you have something you are dying to write about.”
Well, this is ok but you might wind up writing for an audience of one if your interest is too narrow (example: the study of Victorian door knobs). You'd be better off doing a little research on similar topics and sites and developing a topic you're interested in that also has a reasonable following.

One that stands out for me on the corporate side is: Just Post it Already

Many corporate folks still approach blogging as if they're writing an article or book chapter. This is all part of "letting go," which so many people struggle with--particularly marketing people (messaging is still God). I personally have trouble with this one too, having come out of a traditional journalism background. There's something in us that wants to lay out the entire argument, polish it, add transitions and so on. Posting is really more about getting the idea out there in an informal, top of mind way vs polished prose. Think of it as a work in progress, which is never really finished.

" Xeni Jardin, who juggles blogging at the quirky alternative-news site BoingBoing.net with a career as a freelance journalist for NPR, Wired magazine and others, resists the urge to polish her blog prose the way she would a radio script. “Don’t bottle up your ideas forever believing you have to hit the same kind of mature, complete, perfect point as you would with a magazine or newspaper article,” she says. “Blogs are always in progress.” Boing Boing’s bloggers are known for going back to posts to update them, adding new information and striking out factual errors."
The full list (with a few comments)

1. Don't expect to get rich (THERE GOES MY EARLY RETIREMENT PLAN)
2. Write about what you want to write about, in your own voice
3. Fit blogging into the holes in your schedule (WHAT HOLES?)
4. Just post it already!
5. Keep a regular rhythm  (2 to 3x at week minimum--although easier said than done).
6. Join the community
7. Plug yourself  (CUBAN HAS NO PROBLEM WITH THIS ONE)

Are YOU Becoming Obsolete?

... and not realizing it?

Now's a good time to think about your skills and how well you're positioned for the Brave New World barreling down on us.

Here's a good place to start.

Robert Scoble started a list of obsolete skills a few weeks ago here and that later led to a giant and growing wiki .

Scoble's list was pretty straight forward:

1. Dialing a rotary phone.
2. Putting a needle on a vinyl record.
3. Changing tracks on an eight-track tape.
4. Shorthand.
5. Using a slide rule.
6. Using carbon paper to make copies.
7. Developing film/photos.
8. Changing the ball or ribbon on your Selectric Typewriter.
9. Getting off the couch to change channels on your TV set.
10. Adjusting the rabbit ears on your TV set.
11. Changing the gas mixture on your car’s carburetor.

But the longer list--and you can argue about some of these all night--is much more wide ranging.  Some of these were blown out by new technology ("adjusting rabbit ears on a TV", "dialing a rotary phone") others a reflection of changing lifestyles and mass marketing. Who has their milk delivered to their homes anymore? Is "knowing your neighbors" now dead? Are "good manners" history?

Some just faded away quietly. Remember carbon paper or when you had to actually focus a camera or format a floppy? What about percolating coffee?

Some are arguable. Is "common sense" really dead (maybe). Have we truly lost the ability to think--and "drive" (driving a car is listed as a lost skill). What about "read a map?"

So what skills will be obsolete in five or ten years?

Will "writing" be dead? Already "texting" "IM-ing" and "twittering" has replaced true prose in most of the blogosphere--so what's next?

Can ANY Online Community Last?

Steve Rubel raises a good question, as to whether online communities can ever "stick" for any length of time. Most don't last for long. He goes down a long laundry list--The Well, Tripod,  GeoCities, Friendster and so on. Remember CompuServe? All had communities at one time. All came and went. Now it's even more competitive and complex, and the stakes are higher. What does this mean for the likes of a FaceBook or MySpace, let alone a smaller fry like Yelp?

He points out that only a handful of sites endure over a dozen years. Those sites all have "moats" that protect them, he says. "These barriers to entry include peer-to-peer commerce (in the case of Edelman client eBay), robust user reviews (Amazon.com) and deep entrenchment in vertical markets (BlackPlanet.com)."

Besides the moats, I'd also say at least in the case of Amazon, they know how to really serve their customer, uh I mean community visitor. Their user review system is the best. The sales process is automated and smooth, and of course, they use all of their intelligence to tailor choices to each   "If you like XYZ book, you might consider ...."

So it may be mixing apples and oranges, but Amazon does have a community of sorts, mixed with a powerful e-commerce machine--and it works. By comparison, so far,  as Facebook tries to overlay a new marketing system on top of its former community site (while sucking in millions of oldsters like me), it's messy at best. Complaints about violation of privacy run rampant.

My guess is that community sites come and go because that is the nature of communities,which are fleeting and fluid, not much different than past times, when neighbors would convene at the local coffee shop to trade gossip (and still do). Some of those last for years, but in other cases they break up after a few weeks or months.   Facebook's  juggling act is to try to keep people connected and coming back, while they try a slew of marketing schemes to milk everything they can out of this model. They are trying to defy gravity, in a sense, and break from the past. They'll probably pull it off, but don't bet the farm on it lasting forever. The ghosts of The Well and all of the others say otherwise.   

Books on Social Media Marketing (and more)

Following are three good books on social media marketing and PR, and one on presentations;

• The New Rules of Marketing and PR
  
• Online Marketing Heroes: Interviews with 25 Successful Marketing Gurus
  
• Radically Transparent
  
• Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery
  

The New Rules of Marketing and PR (David Meerman Scott)

I liked this book. Well organized and thought out, it outlines a new approach to marketing and PR, using Web 2.0 tools. The old days of mass marketing and PR has  been replaced. Now it’s all about conversations, interaction, and appealing directly to the user’s needs. You’d better give the customer the information they want, when they want it—or kiss them goodbye.

My favorite part of the book is where the author talks about how anyone can now be an online publisher, even corporations. Chapter nine outlines the “content rich website” which will undoubtedly replace the old marketing-driven website of the 1990s, with these focusing on the viewer/reader. Other good chapters on “branding your company as a trusted resource,” blogging to reach your buyers, and the usual stuff on wikis, podcasting, and other web 2.0 tools.

David covers a lot of strategic and practical ground. As the Amazon review puts it, this book, “provides the technical novice a thoughtful and accessible guide to cutting-edge media arenas and formats such as RSS, podcasts and viral marketing, without neglecting the fact that technological wizardry can't substitute for a well-thought out marketing program. This may even be a better book than The New Influencers, which I also liked (see review).

Other noteworthy books (which I’m either reading or will be reading soon):

1) Online Marketing Heroes: Interviews with 25 Successful Online Marketing Gurus (Michael Miller)

Covers everything from web design to blog marketing and online advertising. Nice array of bloggers and writers.

2) Radically Transparent (Andy Beal and Judy Strauss) 

Andy Beal writes a great blog so this is bound to be a good book. Written for any marketer or PR manager-or anyone—who has to deal with online reputations—whether you’re trying to polish your company’s reputation, or someone has blasted you.