Just wanted to revisit my fave social media blogger Chris Brogan's list of what we might want a social media expert to know.
This was originally posted over a month ago, on April 15, and his original list was as follows:
(my summarizing!)
Strategic:
Here are mine (I just picked one for each):
Strategic
- know how to find and use champions within the organization AND be able to help employees nurture the networks once built.
Tactical (technical)?
- Be aware of the latest platforms and applications, test some personally, but be able to discern when they are not yet proven to be of worth to an organization. Continuously listen to the conversation.
I think this kind of list can be really useful - for those of us who consider ourselves "early adopters", we can benchmark ourselves against it to see if we could make the leap from enthusiast to expert; and for those of us who work for associations, we can use this list to help decide if we can do it from the inside or if we're ready to get some outside help in. Either way, it's all good.
Chris Brogan, by the way, totally rocks. Bookmark his list of his best social media advice - you'll be reading for days - or will have a handy resource for when your association is ready to just get crackin'.
Link to original post
This was originally posted over a month ago, on April 15, and his original list was as follows:
Strategic
- Which department you think your role should fall into.
- How your role ties to marketing, PR, advertising, R&D, finance, HR, sales.
- What tasks you'd expect a community manager to perform, and how would you measure them.
- How you expect a company to engage in "the conversation," and what processes will go into place to make any of that matter.
- How to turn blog posts into business leads.
- How to listen and find where people are talking about you.
- Ways to report your weekly listening and community work to a very senior level person in a huge company that has about 2 minutes of time to hear your briefing.
- Know about 100 people in the space who are doing something. The more diverse the profession and location, the better.
- How to launch and operate a blogger outreach campaign.
- How to tie other media into social media as an integrated campaign.
Tactical
- How to install a blog (pick your software) on a hosted server.
- How to edit the sidebar to include a widget, or an embed, or anything.
- How to create, edit, and post at least one other type of media besides text.
- At least five social network accounts active, including but not limited to: LinkedIn, Yahoo! Groups, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
- How to find and subscribe to a podcast WITHOUT using iTunes.
- Five stats worth knowing for any blog/website.
- How to structure a blog post so that humans and Google like it.
(my summarizing!)
Strategic:
- Have some knowledge of non-US engines and social media groups
- How to measure value/ROI in different ways (not just sales)
- How to "feed the content beast"
- Have some insight into sociology/behavioral research
- How to match specific needs with the appropriate communications channels - NOT one size fits all
- Be active offline in the social media community (real F2F relationships with other "experts" as well as knowing them online)
- Know the art of timing
- Have experienced some mistakes and why they happened
- Be able to clarify the purpose of participating in social media
- Be able to define what constitutes success, how to measure it and how to optimize it to improve over time.
- Be able to demonstrate RSS
- Be able to show pros and cons about various tools
- Know how to find answers quickly (eg Twitter vs. Google)
- Have an understanding of analytics beyond just a few statistics
- Have an understanding of Search Engine Optimization
- Have an understanding of public v. private, personalization, data portability, how viral loops really work, social media etiquette, groups within groups and other issues around networks
Here are mine (I just picked one for each):
Strategic
- know how to find and use champions within the organization AND be able to help employees nurture the networks once built.
Tactical (technical)?
- Be aware of the latest platforms and applications, test some personally, but be able to discern when they are not yet proven to be of worth to an organization. Continuously listen to the conversation.
I think this kind of list can be really useful - for those of us who consider ourselves "early adopters", we can benchmark ourselves against it to see if we could make the leap from enthusiast to expert; and for those of us who work for associations, we can use this list to help decide if we can do it from the inside or if we're ready to get some outside help in. Either way, it's all good.
Chris Brogan, by the way, totally rocks. Bookmark his list of his best social media advice - you'll be reading for days - or will have a handy resource for when your association is ready to just get crackin'.
Link to original post