When I launched Conversation Agent back in the summer of 2006, I had a pretty simple concept. My observation was that the line between marketing and public relations would be blurring considerably with greater adoption of social media. The idea that brands should start learning good manners, show personality, and behave is now starting to take hold.
In other words, marketers would have to become better communicators, skilled at one to one relationships, just like their colleagues in public relations.
I must have worked in a recession for the better part of my career as I cannot recall a time when I was responsible for one and not the other. At some point I even came to define myself as a professional operating at the intersection of marketing and PR - where the people and ideas are.
Fast forward to today and you now have practitioners involved in social media and community who come from a wide variety of professional backgrounds and skill sets.
The most common so far in what I have encountered are: interactive or digital marketing, digital media, corporate communications. As I stated before, I think public relations professionals are well poised to work very well with social media. They are more acquainted with the idea of personal outreach.
Everyone can use some help with conversation.
It's not all talk anymore. Social media is becoming part of our language and behavior - as customers first, as professionals a close second. The terminology may or will change, the dynamics remain. It's extreme personalization driving it - listening, having a voice, making a difference to the final results.
With all of this in mind, if it doesn't hurt too much, I think it would be interesting to propose how I would do a list from which to nominate the Social Media Marketer of the Year.
This is no Nobel Prize, which took place a couple of months ago with Medicine and Physics opening up the honors. This selection would not be quite as rigorous as those, and hopefully not as contentious or mysterious as that of the Prize for Literature. It might sit somewhere in between. The world is smaller now - global professionals and women (did you know that only 5% won the Prize?) should be on the list.
Each single list I have seen online has been created and maintained by an individual.
Because this is social media, and I am after all the Conversation Agent, if I were to do this, I would hand pick a panel of judges to join me in the collection of metrics and evaluation of the professionals in the running. Together, we'd choose metrics that are less open to personal judgment. Although what would social media be without opinion?
Potentially metrics like:
REACH: Based on
Quantcast. This requires participating sites to place the code. They wouldn't be competitive without it, anyway. Alexa is okay at detecting traffic surges in sites which already have a fair amount of traffic. But it's awful -- really awful -- at ranking niche sites. So it would be useless for our purposes.
INFLUENCE: Based on RSS count. RSS shows that readers are committed to a site. If FeedBurner stats are public, we would look at those. Otherwise we'd have to go with Google Reader stats. These represent only part of a site's RSS base, but they're the biggest, and can be looked up. Everyone could be on a level playing field.
CONVERSATION: Because I am the Conversation Agent. We'd total the number of comments on each ranked site (by hand) for one week out of the month-long survey period. Think of it as sweeps week. Which week is a close secret. Comments left at other sites would also count and be included, whenever possible. I realize this would be tricky.
CONSISTENCY: Nobody ranks this. The panel counts the total number of days in which someone posts during the month. We would also look at the quality of the posts written.
INNOVATION: The secret sauce metric, but it'd be based on a panel, not one person. Everyone ranks each site, based on originality: How often are they leading topics, not following? What they say isn't as important as being fresh and vibrant -- stepping out of the echo chamber. Analysis and solid content would trump newsy posts.
OVERALL: A sum of the above, which should also yield a nice ROI (return on involvement and influence; the investment of time, attention and care).
Who would have thought we'd come up with an Italian word? From the
Jim Collins laboratory:
A Hedgehog (riccio) Concept is not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, an intention to be the best, a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at. The distinction is absolutely crucial.
This list would not be open to everyone. You must be nominated by your peers to be ranked. If I were to publish a list, this is how I'd go about it.
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image of Sonic the Hedgehog, Wikipedia]
Conversation Agent
Connecting ideas and people - how talk can change our lives
by Valeria Maltoni