What a social media consultant's job really is

Often, it's not that there's no-one in a client organisation who knows what a wiki is, or what YouTube can do, etc.

It's that their department is usually IT, which is neither marketing nor executive, unless that organisation is particularly nimble and agile, or small.




[Social media consultants are organisational wall-demolishers]


So when we come in as social media consultants, it's often as connectors - connecting different parts of the organisation together, in order to connect the organisation to its markets/publics/audiences.

Which is why, as well as learning the technology, I'm pouring a lot of time and effort into understanding organisational psychology.

Why blog?

Just had a really good insight on why it's good for business to blog ... from a 49-year-old self-identified "dinosaur" whose job involves a whole lot of networking:

When you're talking with someone and the conversation goes beyond business, you know the relationship is going to last.

Voila. Blogging - and all other forms of social media - are simply that, online.

Jump In #35: Regan Cunliffe from Throng.co.nz

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( more info: http://ijump.co.nz ... ) Throng is a social network for TV watchers, producers and broadcasters. It's been very successful in four countries, and it's run from NZ! We talk with Throng founder Regan Cunliffe about online community.

Do you perform? Are you an introvert?

JJProjects posted a pretty thought-provoking piece on Twitter yesterday:

People always talk about community and conversation, but hardly ever about performance. People don't like to speak of this in those terms

He then said it on 12Seconds:

Community, Conversation and Performance on 12seconds.tv

(Check out the following conversation)

Once I'd sorted out that he meant performance as in "Broadway" as opposed to "Performance Management", JJ's thoughts tapped into my own latent thinking about this area.

When you perform, life is fun. That's what the people in the book Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results found out, that having a performance mentality can make even mundane tasks into a game.

Performance could also be called acting. Some people think of acting as being fake, as being something else. But anyone who's done a drama course, or studied the Robert deNiros and Dustin Hoffmans of this world, knows that can't be true. Acting is a way of letting the real you out!

And so is social media. Yesterday I got a review copy of Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob, written on the premise that "the internet's widespread anonymity eliminates boundaries and encourages otherwise polite people to be downright abusive."

That may be so for some, but I've seen the other side of the coin - real people, exploring and discovering themselves, learning how to become "micro-famous" ... not necessarily for the esteem of others but out of sheer curiosity about what makes us tick.

So... back to performance ... how about this statement:

The self-publishing tools of the internet give people like me (particularly introverts) a playground to explore, discover what I have that is unique to the world.

It's like an incubator for self-branding.

There's a lot in this. Thankfully this is a blog post, not an article or a book, so it's okay that these are fragmentary, half-formed thoughts. There's something to the performance aspect, and there's something to the game aspect that I haven't even touched on it.

And there's also something to the introvert side of it. I find that self-expressing through blogging and Twitter has made me generally more confident in physical-world (I despise the term "real-world", as if what we do on the internet isn't real) situations.

What do you think? Love to hear your thoughts.

Possibly related:
Courage and Cameras
Virtual, or Fake?

The benefits of commuting

Worked from home yesterday, which was a welcome relief from the treadmill (literally, as I didn't go to the gym, and metaphorically).

But today I'm back on the treadmill (the metaphorical one, anyway) and already I've consumed a whole heap of information before hitting the work day. Whether I can turn that knowledge into useful action is another thing! :)


But here's what I consumed this morning:

1) A fantastic interview with Erich Joachimsthaler, co-author of Brand Leadership, about how to hardwire innovation into an organisation.

2) The always salubrious For Immediate Release, where I learned about the SEC's IDEA, and that Brits call PR professionals, PR's. My next question, why do the British call marketers marketeers? Is it something to do with musketeers or privateers?

3) Chapter 5 of Groundswell, listening to the groundswell. It's such a well-written introductory text!

4) Paul Dunay's interview with Dotster's Catherine Brown - which, ironically, echoed much of the same info from this morning's Groundswell chapter.

5) Marketing Over Coffee, where I learned about 80s music and Filipino cover bands, among the useful stuff

and I had to stop listening because I'd arrived at work, but am looking forward to:

6) Researchtalk.co.uk's Pre-Cast for this year's ESOMAR conference, where among other things they'll be discussing brands as collective constructs. I can't wait!

Jump In #34: TVNZ's Jason Paris

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(more info: http://ijump.co.nz ) We interview Marketer of the Year, TVNZ's Jason Paris, about how TVNZ has transformed itself in the last few years, and how this large, historical organisation is experimenting with new media while maintaining the old.

Jump In #34: TVNZ's Jason Paris

Click to Play

(more info: http://ijump.co.nz ) We interview Marketer of the Year, TVNZ's Jason Paris, about how TVNZ has transformed itself in the last few years, and how this large, historical organisation is experimenting with new media while maintaining the old.