Like to many others, my next week will be marked by the dmexco Online-Advertising trade fair in Cologne, Germany. Looking very forward to engaging in an intense mass of business converations, meeting clients, colleagues, and friends from pretty much any stage of my work life.

Of the many year-over-year rituals that emerged around dmexco, one that many agree on is that the official dmexco party just doesn't seem to overcome it's image of being rather boring, while everyone who can is floating over to the unofficial dmexco event called the OM Club.

In one of a few attempts to grab one of the OM Club Tickets while I can, I am sending a shout over to the keen contestants of the JahresendSEO - competition who will give away a few tickets in return for a link to their race to the #1 for hottest SEO-term of the year.

Keep your fingers crossed for me. I will update you on how the dmexco-days went.

"How much hot air is there in Social Media?" was the main focus of the discussion-encouragingly small sized Social-Media-Club-Hamburg meeting on last thursday. There are good wrap-ups out here and here (all German), so I'm focussing on a single aspect that was discussed: What frames a Social Media Expert and where in the field does he or she sit?

For the most part, I would like to stick with the thesis I made during the discussion:
Social Media Consulting is a partial discipline of PR-/Communications-Consulting. Rather than thinking of a role of its own or an all new position in a company or agency, the responsibilities would fall into the realm of a general PR-expert, reflecting the need to integrate social media activities and effort into the media mix the company or client is deciding to go for. The social media activities should speak their own language and follow their specific dynamics but the cut and characteristics chosen need to have their systematic purpose within the altogether communication-strategy of the company. Instead of PR it might work to adress Marketing, maybe sales as the discipline to integrate the consultant into - my choice of PR was backed up though by a freelance communications consultant who stressed the multi-field-approach of modern PR - it not only communicates in an advertising-near way, company-to-customers, but coordinates the CEOs public appearance, communications towards and among co-workers, mission statements, just to name a few. This multi-faceted nature of the discipline matches the equally multi-facetted ways of social media, and gives it a head-start compared to those other disciplines.
Romy Mlinzk met my call for PR-Experts to do the job with concerns about narrow-mindedness, "can't teach an old dog new tricks"-worries and general closedness of established actors in the field who'd avoid an innovative dealing with social media. In this way I must say I wasn't picturing old farts but professionals who have managed to hold on to their passion, and who are in the position of routinedly evaluating what it takes to deal with a challenging field. Let's not forget social media's foremost purpose isn't considered commercial communication by most people. This is why it might require a deal of experience to generate an ongoing willingness on the clients's side to set free the financial resources it takes to sustainably pursue a social media approach.

I would like to thank Hendrik Ast for the notion of "Change Experts" as the exact opposite of my integrated approach - he suggested social media consulting of a type where a person beyond the company's immediate structure would be in the position to acommodate the whole company in adapting itself to optimal social media implementation in any possible way. He especially brought up the social media facette of Enterprise 2.0. It was helpful to hear Hans J. Martin mention controlling or quality management approaches like the balanced scorecard or Six Sigma as examples that have caused paradigm changes in the way some entreprises tick. It's an interesting comparison to how social media expertise could change corporate culture. (Thanks also, Christian Riedel: Grant McKracken's "Chief Culture Officer" is on its way to me right since that evening...)

Another approach towards not immediately embedding a company's social media activities into it's traditional structure was the notion of a 'hero' - someone in the company who just happens to be passionate about social media and is happy to involve himself in creating social media measurements for the company. The purpose here is to make sure the first crucial steps are not throtteled by company structures (via @kaifischer).

Two news from the world of the ad budget economy shaped a funny coincidence today:

One obvious point for Buzz to differ from Twitter is the tight connection to your inbox and it’s inhabitants. Your usual crowd of twitter followers and followees is an artificial and virtual construction - ever sent Ashton Kutcher a personal email? No. Typical Buzz communication however is likely to get shaped by the more private-ish approach of having a conversation up with the peer group that is also sitting in your email address list.

When I signed into Buzz for the first time, My aunt, well in her 70ies and not exactly a web 2.0 power user so far, and my 13-year-old son were among the illustrous in-crowd of the nine contacts Buzz automatically made me follow. Either suggestion was unexpected but inspiring, if I think a bit about them as people to start following.

Enter the showstopper: If I decide to keep my list of people I follow public, which I assume to be Google’s perfectly sense-making idea, they’re all out there: My son’s real first and last name, with a number of additional, probably location based infos just one click away.

If Buzz is supposed to dwell on the powerful advantage of the more reality-based social graph that your email contacts compose, there will have to be a way to hide individual followees, and not just to switch your whole list off or on. Twitter doesn’t offer such a feature either, but there the view on my list of followees only reveals @aplusk, @joeschmoe and the like, but not Andreas Wagner jr, sitting at …°-latitude and …°-longitude, click here for a google-map of his daily walk to school.

Update, 02/15/10: Google has announced not to automatically make you follow people any more. 

http://www.milkcratenyc.com/blog/2010/02/thegangsallhere.html

via @cle50000

‘We can no longer afford to be a one-screen business. Social networks are finally the interactive dimension of storytelling. We now need to evolve with our audience. To resist this would be like resisting Technicolor.’

Elisabeth Murdoch, Shine Group

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-murdoch-jr-borderline-piracy-may-be-our-best-outlet/

I’d have to lie if I said they wouldn’t.

As much as you might want to change the world, sometimes there is not that much you can change — particularly when you are dealing with the world of television”
Brent Poer, MediaVest

Current TV to shift from video format — latimes.com

Hätte ich nicht besser darstellen können…