Macalua.com

You have a need. You realize your word-of-mouth marketing initiatives need a little social media push 2.0 style. The only time people talked about and linked to you was during some ho hum swag swap meet your friend arranged with some bloggers who looked and behaved like this was their first time out in years.

You start conversations with your new buzz ambassadors and realize that they’re not really the best that blogger 1 was into stamp collecting, while blogger 2 was into celebrity news. You walk away resigned to the fact that your 5 minutes of blog fame would never have the WOMM ROI you were hoping for.

Your recourse? You hook up with a social media expert or SME (not to be confused with snake oil salesmen). SMEs come in different forms and sizes. But one common denominator is their propensity to equate expertise with any of the following:

1. Total blog feed subscriber count
2. Daily blog traffic stats
3. PageRank
4. Digg, Facebook, Friendster, Plurk, Twitter, LinkedIn friend/follower count.
5. Total member count of social media app built, bought or maintained by the SME
6. Invitations to social media-focused offline events

It’s hard not to consider these as our SME might have spent countless hours/days building up his or her SM profile. Setting up accounts, profile pics, avatars, blog themes, widgets, etc. can be time consuming and if it has a purpose it’s this: it proves that 1) he/she could give a smart auto signup/maintain bot a good run for its money and 1) your SME has too much free time on his/her hands (emphasis on free, as in not work-related).

Most social media experts miss the target, badly.

Expertise should never be defined by just the simple artifacts mentioned above. An expert should know the medium inside out but greater emphasis should be given to strategy and creative execution. He/she should know how to identify the right seeders and the right incentive that appeals to these seeders. Our expert should know that humor still sells best. He/she would be able to design creatives the can incorporate humor but still convey a marketing message. Lastly, our expert should be an offline networking force since in the Philippines, offline drives online.

So how do you cut through the bullshit that is Philippine Social Media? Who among our self-proclaimed social media experts really hold up to the test?

Thank you Michael for the inspiration.