Check out the Counting Crows (CC) Facebook strategy. CC fans want to know when their favorite band is touring. CC will only reveal that information when enough of their fans share their Facebook application. Fans who share with 10 or more friends are entered to win free tickets. Those who participate are signed up for updates from the band. The strategy is brilliant:

1) It’s simple. Anyone can understand it immediately.

2) It’s effective. Motivated fans want to know the information; they can participate quickly and easily for free.

3) It’s “viral.” Fans are provided an incentive for sharing.

I like that model, especially because the big prize – and the incentive for sharing – is access to information. The promotion serves as a good reminder that revealing information can have a greater impact than a traditional give away.

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On November 16th at 7 p.m. we’re hosting the first social media book club. Space is limited. We currently have 6 registered, and we are looking for 12 more to join us. We’re meeting near our office in Kenmore Square in a beautiful conference room to discuss Brian Solis‘ “The End of Business as Usual.” Currently, we have a brand manager from P&G, a strategy consultant, two students from Harvard and BU, several members of the refine+focus team and a marketing practitioner joining us.

Everyone coming not only cares deeply about social media marketing and business strategy, they also are interested in developing personal and business relationships with other practitioners.

If you’re interested in joining us, leave a comment with your email, and why you are interested. We’ll meet for 2 hours and discuss the first 14 chapters (pages 1-169). We are especially interested in hearing your reactions to controversial ideas and your thoughts on applying Brian’s ideas to real business situations.

Many times this year, I’ve hosted events in the Oak Room at our office. We’ve hosted at least 5 roundtable discussions on social media strategy and 1 free workshop for Boston entrepreneurs to receive feedback from successful business owners and ambitious students. I love Boston and I am very committed to creating a space where social media, business practitioners and entrepreneurs can share ideas.

If you share this vision, I’d love to meet you sometime soon, better yet, join us on the 11/16.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed. It is the only thing that ever has.” –Margaret Mead

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Clearly, in titling his piece “I Will Never Hire a ‘Social Media Expert,’ and Neither Should You,” Shankman (a social media entrepreneur himself) was knowingly drawing a line in the sand. To be pro-Shankman, however, would mean that you reject the notion that social media experts exist, and, therefore, you would never hire someone alleging to be one.

It is true, of course, that social media (like any field where there’s money to be made) is not exempt from the fair share of bullshitting pseudo-“experts” running around and cutting corners, trying to capitalize on the next big thing and on those who don’t know or care what “good business” actually means. They measure success in Facebook fans, and they tell you that they can get you 10,000 more Likes in exchange for a few hundred bucks. What a deal! What they don’t tell you is that those 10,000 coveted “fans” are actually a bunch of snot-nosed, hormonal teenagers somewhere in Malaysia who will Like your company today and un-Like it tomorrow. These social media scam artists (Shankman’s “experts”) equate fans and follower growth to social media success; they neither know nor care about your business.

Real social media experts, however, can navigate through the hype to find and evaluate the business value of community. They understand how to achieve real, long-lasting results for a company, whether by generating revenue, enhancing reputation, lowering cost per acquisition, or using strategies that are uniquely informed by social media. True social media experts have done and continue to do their research. They practice the metrics in books like Jim Sterne’s Social Media Metrics: How To Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment, in order to optimize customer satisfaction, cost, and revenue for a given company. They approach any social media strategy with a comprehensive understanding of how the business functions. They understand that, while $136 may be the value of a Facebook fan for a global company like Coca-Cola, that same data point it not true for all companies.

So, the real issue isn’t whether or not you should hire a social media expert but, rather, how to determine whether someone is an expert and what type of expert would be most beneficial for your company. Here are 8 criteria to aid in the process:

1. Personal experience. In 2006, my friend Lorenz and I arrived at PodCamp Boston. We were welcomed by a very relaxed, unusually friendly guy named Chris Brogan, who showed a very real interest in us. Chris’s perspective on social media and business stems authentically from who he is and from his interpersonal connections. The same can be said for many social media experts whom I know, who don’t see their time spent on Twitter or at social events as a rigid work activity but, rather, as something very closely connected to who they are and to what they believe. Their relationship with social media enables them to understand the unwritten rules for engaging online.

2. Business experience. If you are hiring a social media expert, understanding their business background is key. What was their professional experience prior to becoming a social media expert? What clients have they worked for and what success have they achieved for them? How was that success measured? How has their business background shaped how they approach social media? Is their experience client-side, agency-side, or as an independent practitioner? What social media initiatives have they led and what were the results?

3. Reputation. Who endorses them? What have they published, and where? In what capacities do they have influence?

4. Ability to interpret metrics. Do metrics inform their decision-making process? Are goals and KPIs initially used to measure performance? Do they continually assess their work?

5. Knowledge of emerging trends. Do they have opinions about emerging trends that are based both on their own experiences and on reviews of credible sources?

6. Knowledge of frameworks. Which frameworks inform how they plan and implement strategy, and what sources influence those frameworks?

7. Ability to create and execute strategies. Not only can the social media expert create and execute strategy, but they also have the capacity to predict the outcomes of that strategy, to properly estimate and allocate resources, and to manage a budget.

8. What they hold sacred. Which tactics would they never use, under any circumstances? What would cause them to walk away from business? What are their fundamental values and approaches to social media?

Social media experts do, in fact, exist. They may, however, cringe upon hearing the term “expert” attached to their name. In general, there seems to be a stigma attached to the word “expert” (or “guru,” “master,” etc.) regardless of the field of expertise, and bona fide experts will go to great lengths to denounce their expert-status. Is it modesty? Insecurity? A self-defense mechanism so as not to be targeted for their “expert” opinion?

The term “social media expert” also proves challenging because it’s nearly becoming too general. There are experts in social media who understand promotions, experts who focus on research and sociology, experts who focus on sentiment analysis, and still others whose background lies in-stream advertising within social networks.

Below, I have included my own Top 20 list of social media experts (in alphabetical order), with sincere apologies to those who scoff at being labeled as such:

1. David Armano
2. Rohit Bhargava
3. Edward Boches
4. Dana Boyd
5. Chris Brogan
6. PR Sarah Evans
7. Jason Falls
8. Steve Garfield
9. Paul Gillian
10. Alex Howard
11. Joselin Mane
12. Scott Monty
13. Amanda Mooney
14. Darren Rowse
15. Steve Rubel
16. Brian Solis
17. Aaron Strout
18. Mike Schneider
19. Todd Van Hooser
20. Greg Verdino

Written by Zach Braiker, in collaboration with Lesley Yoder, Ph.D.

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I’ve learned to express myself in 140 characters or less. It’s not only how I write tweets, it’s also how I communicate in emails. Folks in my world want fast and simple communication. Analysis isn’t welcomed in these emails; long power point decks aren’t either. Actions and decisions are valued with short rationale.

What’s missing is time to reflect, and it’s evidenced in how we communicate. Writing an email we expect a response within 24 hours, same with a voicemail and a text message within two hours. We can cater our reply on how our audience responds to us.

Letters are different. You may not hear back from someone for days. You do not know whether they understoond your jokes or found your arguments persuasive. You imagine them in your head and write a letter to that person you imagine.

It’s day two of reading these love letters written in 1967, which I purchased at the flea market. We’re about 50 letters in and it’s clear than Johnny loves June. He writes her every week, often three times. June clearly doesn’t want to marry him, but he is not dissuaded. He goes on describing his world, which is really a device to bring her more deeply into it so he can ask the question again, like a song whose only merit is its catchy chorus.

If Johnny and June were Facebook friends, or even had email or Skype, this courtship would have ended within months not years. They would see each other’s lives openly and decide whether or not they were compatible. All the nuance of Johnny’s subtle asking and June’s not so subtle rejecting would have been lost as their relationship would have ended long before this courtship actually began.

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From the NYTimes: “Egypt is a reminder not to be suckered into the narrative that a place is stable because it is static.”

I’ve followed this debate between Malcolm Gladwell and others about whether social networks haved received disproportional credit for their role in fuel revolutions. I’ve particularly enjoyed Brian Solis’ response to Gladwell’s skepticism:

“Trufecki and Ingram are on to something, but they — and Gladwell — miss something very basic about the nature of Twitter and other social tools, something critical to revolution. Ideas spread more rapidly in densely connected social networks. So tools that increase the density of social connection are instrumental to the changes that spread.”

While the social networks are not creating revolutions, they create contexts in which conversations and connections occur which amplify revolution. Clay Shirky’s and Malcolm Gladwell’s debate this point in further depth following Shirky’s Foreign Affair’s article.

Gladwell offers: “What evidence is there that social revolutions in the pre-Internet era suffered from a lack of cutting-edge communications and organizational tools? In other words, did social media solve a problem that actually needed solving? Shirky does a good job of showing how some recent protests have used the tools of social media. But for his argument to be anything close to persuasive, he has to convince readers that in the absence of social media, those uprisings would not have been possible.”

To whick Shirky responds:

“So I would break Gladwell’s question of whether social media solved a problem that actually needed solving into two parts: Do social media allow insurgents to adopt new strategies? And have those strategies ever been crucial? Here, the historical record of the last decade is unambiguous: yes, and yes.”

In lighter reading news, David Edelstein’s review of Justin Bieber is a brilliantly written social commentary, here’s a highlight: “I find him such a bland, pious, profoundly unthreatening little Furby of a pop idol, but little girls’ celebrity crushes are not to be trifled with. And this sensationally engineered promo film makes Justin Bieber look like a true force of nature.”

The smack down of the weeks come in the form of this statement about Nokia’s engineers, ready? “The engineers at Nokia brag about the number of megapixels a new phone has,” he said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “But they don’t understand that if you can’t find the button to use the camera on the phone, it doesn’t matter how many megapixels it is.” Ouch.

As far as thought provoking, TechCrunch’s Jon Evan’s delivers a powerful piece called, “The End of History, Part II.” Here’s a highlight: “The Internet—in this case, though I hate to adm” it it, Facebook—lets oppressed people join in outrage, in shared fury and humiliation, in the sense of being part of a single mass of people with a single intent. Where else can you get that, in a blindfolded, fragmented nation?”

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Meet Alex Howard. He’s a journalist and Gov 2.0 correspondent for O’Reilly Media. We met a few years back at Steve Garfield‘s Boston Media Makers, and ever since, I’ve literally learned from Alex every day on Twitter. You can follow him to hear insights about the government and technology. You’ll learn about trends before they become such, and things you ought to – and probably will – read. Here are a few examples of follow-worthy tweets from Alex:

1. Thank you, @rrichard09. I bought the Foreign Affairs with this @cshirky essay http://fam.ag/g0QfJ3 in (gasp) print last week.
2. 1000+ people watching #PdFleaks livestream: http://t.co/cckXL8q @wikileaks has retweeted the link. Little Brother is watching.
3. Delhi Police Use Facebook to Track Scofflaw Drivers http://nyti.ms/9eSdSO ”Cognitive Surplus at work”-@atul. #Gov20
4. @bostonmarketer Sadly, I overwhelmed @apsinkus with volume. He said he transferred me to RSS, a shift I’ve heard from others, honestly.
5. FYI: When I add PRT to the beginning of a tweet, it means it’s a Partial Retweet http://bit.ly/Ftomu | Important to signal modification, IMO

We spoke via email about his field and the ways he personally uses social networking.

1. In a recent talk (State of the Net Panel), you mentioned how U.S. policy for our own people may be different from what we are promoting in places like Tunisia. Can you elaborate those differences and their implications?

Good question, and a difficult one to answer. We’re in a dynamic historical moment, with respect to how quickly the traditional relationships between government institutions, citizens and media is changing because of disruptive technologies. The tools for publishing have been democratized and accessible to millions, from blogs to video to Twitter to mobile smartphones more powerful than early NASA computers.

The tension here, with respect to government, is that the same tools that enable distributed publishing, encryption or broadcasting that the State Department is supporting or funding for “Internet freedom” abroad under autocratic regimes can be used to gather and distribute information about the United States government that many in government do not wish to see made public. The motivations for those wishes vary from potential embarrassment to inefficiency to national security concerns. The State Department and Department of Defense have been challenged by that changing information environment, as the world knows well at this point.

The Obama administration made a statement about open government in 2009 by issuing an open government directive, which agencies have been working to address in the month since. At no point, however, have open government policies, pledges or support for connection technologies meant threatening national security or the radical transparency that some advocates urge.

That said, the default position has been towards over-classification or secrecy in many levels of government. There’s a middle ground here. Data or information that that shows fraud, incompetence, crime or proves otherwise embarrassing is naturally not something any institution wants to release. The challenge is the policy choices that United States federal, state and local government entities make with respect to open data, privacy, security or online identity can and will be seen by others around the world. If there is support for Internet freedom abroad, including protections or support for citizens sharing information about corruption or other malfeasance, that same policy should in theory apply within borders.

Every nation state has a strategic interest in controlling damaging information and exposing others. The issue is immensely complex and does not lend itself to easy analysis nor solutions. More thoughts on Wikileaks and open government here.

2. Citizens are becoming more influential through social networks and influencing their peers. Is this a good thing?

On the whole, yes. New research from Pew suggests that this is an important trend, with respect to our understanding of what it means to be a citizen and how our actions influence those of others. The role of the Internet as a platform for collective action is growing but the authorities that control the levers of power offline still matters immensely. Congress is using social media to talk, not listen. As Doyle McManus observed, considering the role of the Internet in the Tunisian revolution, “it’s nice to have Twitter, but it’s even nicer to have the army on your side.”

Revolutions aside, emerging research around how these new connections influence citizens is fascinating. The use and sophistication of these platforms is its infancy. If you look at emerging social media health trends, however, there are notable patterns around behavior, lifestyle and influence. Whether those trends extrapolate to more vibrant civil society or participatory democracy relies on much more than the social networks themselves. That means that digital and information literacy will become even more important, along with the evolving role of teachers and librarians in societies. The Knight Commission on the information needs of communities in a democracy drives home how difficult this issue is, given the massive disruption to traditional platforms for news. A crucial part of this story in the future will be founded in how communities collectively discover, share, filter and analyze social data.

3. Do you agree or disagree that geek culture online is being dismantled?

I disagree, although with caveats. There are many, many places online where geek culture is alive and thriving. Given that geeks build most of the most popular social platforms, the conventions of the culture are often literally coded into the conversation. What’s important to recognize here is that what used to be “geek” culture has been massively democratized. It’s no longer weird for someone to have a powerful smartphone, write online, upload video to the Web, meet a date online, watch Internet videos on a TV at home or play video games. These are the new norms. In many ways, it might be fair to say that we’ve met the geeks, and they have become us.

I asked Alex a few questions about his personal social media strategy. The word influencer is often overused, but it does apply to him. And I asked him to share his own strategies for engagement online.

4. Why did you decide to create an Alex Howard Facebook page? Good move?

When I created the page on Facebook to share my work, it was because I saw clear trends that supported the move, with respect to information consumption behavior and inbound traffic. I wanted to create a virtual space there where I could interact with readers without having to be their “friends.” I also didn’t want to overwhelm the friends I do have there with the volume my writing. So far, results from the move are a mixed bag. I’m extremely grateful to the 46 people who have “liked” the page, as it’s same to assume they really do want to keep track of what I’m working on. That said, I’m not catalyzing the level of engagement with the work I’d like to see. When you look at how a world-class journalist like Nick Kristof is using Facebook to report on Egypt, you can see how much further I have yet to grow!

5.  How do you read? Do you use an RSS reader? Just read links shared links on Twitter? Are you constantly reading or do you set time to read?

We have a Kindle in the house, although I still prefer to read books and long form journalism in print, although I do read long articles on my laptop or iPhone using Instapaper.

How I read largely depends on the subject. For some topics, the Web is best. For, say, congressional testimony, that’s not always true. I still read a lot of books in print. Ditto magazines, especially the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Economist or Foreign Affairs. I’ve shifted almost all of my ”newspapers” consumption to digital form, either on a tablet or laptop, though I still enjoy reading an entire Sunday paper in print over brunch.

I use Twitter to discover and share a lot of what matters to me professionally but still keep an eye on the journals that aren’t available online. I listen to the radio while I work as well. And yes, I still use an RSS reader to make sure that I never miss new content from certain sources.

6. Who are a few people whom you learn from on Twitter?

Look at who I’m following. I learn from all of them, plus my lists. Individually, I might include people like @MarcAmbinder, @SusannaFox, @TimOReilly, @SteveSilberman, @acarvin, @alexismadrigal, @BrainPicker, @MarkKnoller, @rmack, @ethanz, @mathewi, @JayRosen_NYU, @palafo, @TimOBrien, @NYT_JenPreston, @NiemenLab, @participatory, @louisgray, @evgenymorozov, @patrickmeier and @ahier, though I could list dozens of other people.

7. Do you have a favorite new social media tool or two you can recommend?

I’m trying out trunk.ly for links. I’m curious about pinboard.in. I’m now a fan of instagr.am.

8. Do you have a favorite historical moment that you shared on Twitter?

When my fiancee said yes to my proposal. Still the most retweeted tweet I’ve ever posted.

—

Make sure to connect with Alex (http://twitter.com/digiphile). I promise you you’ll learn something insightful!

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1. A Twitter mention by Shaq is worth more than someone who has 1/30 his followers right? Not if you’re a technology start up and that person with 1/30 of Shaq’s followers is Walt Mossberg.

2. It’s important to increase Facebook followers. Not if your followers are outside of your core demographic, have no ability to buy your product, fail to provide useful insight and are not interested in contributing to the community.

3. Share of conversion is a useful metric. Don’t mistake the % of mentions for influence or quality. However, deciding in which conversations you want to be mentioned is a useful exercise. It enables you to develop strategies to increase the mentions within the conversations by influential targets after you determine their value.

4. Twitter followers is the most important metric? Are they more important than lists that require a user to consider how they should categorize you; or @ replies, which demonstrate a desire to communicate?

5. Let’s drive traffic with SEO to non-ecommerce sites. Hope you have defined the value of the traffic first and how you measure conversion.

It’s an excellent idea to develop a social media scorecard; however, realize that scorecards support value systems of what is and is not important; the value system needs to be developed before the scorecard.

In terms of measurement, here’s are a few insights you might enjoy:

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Insightful:
Tweet by: @Pistachio “We routinely behave as if in the future we will have more time, more money, & feel less stressed & tired.” – @danariely.
Tweet by @DeepakChopra: The questions we ask ourselves have the power to transform us. Live the questions and life will move you into the answers.
Tweet by @paulocoelho: My “guru” moment is over. I am going outside to take care of my garden.
Tweet by @lizstrauss Disagreements often occur simply because the words we use don’t mean the same things. Check the vocabulary before deciding.

Articles:
Tweet by @AzmatZahra Everything the Internet Knows About Me (Because I Asked It To) by @zseward. http://on.wsj.com/gVjrPX
Why you should read this article: Tons of tools and links to analyze how you spend time online, your behaviors and preferences

Tweet by @GlenGilmore 21 Creative Ways To Increase Your #Facebook Fanbase http://dld.bz/fDxg #sm  RT @Flipbooks
Why you should read this article: Tons of tools and links to analyze how you spend time online, your behaviors and preferences

Tweet by @Jussipekka RT @lorirtaylor Great Social Media Marketing Checklist – http://ht.ly/355K3
Why you should read it: Great questions you should ask before launching a social campaign. Reading this will save you time.

Customer service:
Tweet by @uscb_boston (US Census)
2010 state totals by 12/31, Redistricting data by 4/1/11, SF1 data starting 6/11. Read more at: http://ow.ly/3lPqO
Why I’m adding it here: Impressed that the US Census responded to my question within 2 hours of me asking it…There’s a thoughtful use of government funds.

What’d I miss?

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