Well here goes my 1st blog posting written on OMM Writer, headphones on and soothing sounds in the background. Who would’ve thought there’d ever be a substitute to that “word” app?

Anyway, lemme tell you what is on my mind today?

It is the concept of a SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERT and what that actually means…

Hardly a day goes by that I don’t read something in a newspaper, web site, blog or in an email invitation to an event about some SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERT!

That got me thinking……

What exactly is a social media expert and who qualifies?

I could think of 3 reasons why some-one would consider themselves a social media expert:

1. They know stats:

• Did you know there are now 316 million+ people on facebook?
• Did you know there are close to 30 million tweets every day?
• Did you know there are 100 million + videos on YouTube?

This person always pulls out the stats and use those to make their case. ( really one of my favourites too!)

2. They have their own social media presence:

• Have a blog (or 2, or 3 …)
• Have a twitter following
• Have facebook, linkedin, friendfeed, myspace, blueworld, etc profile.

( I do have more than one of each of the above.)

3. They have done stuff on social media for clients:

• Set-up a bank on facebook
• Set-up a college on twitter
• Set-up a band on MySpace
• Set-up a blog for a travel company

( That’s me too!)

So, does this indeed entitle them to have the designation, SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERT, behind their name?

Does this allow them to claim they know more than every-one else and that they can charge for their expertise accordingly?

I really can’t say.

Reading “The Tipping Point” 10 years after it was published is quite an eye opener. The connectors, as Malcolm Gladwell calls them, did not have any tweets, wall postings or RSS feeds at their disposal. They are simply people that know how to connect with others.

Either they care about people in general, have a wide scope of interests or participate in varied activities. They therefore get in touch with a great number of people and are the real social connectors.

Do you need to be an expert to GET that?

Is social media not merely an online extension of good old fashioned face-to-face networking?

In my opinion, there are online social media experts. Plenty of them. They are not the people however, that speak at conferences, write books or charge for their services.

They are students, academics, business people, mothers, environmetalists, sportsmen and women who ARE connected in any case because of their passions, interests and networks. Social media is merely an extension of their networks and a tool they use to manage those relationships, be it strong ties or the so-called “weak ties.”

They are the ones that understand the power of the online social network and use it to their advantage. Very seldom, I dare say, do they do so for financial gain.

Next time you hear of a social media expert, ask yourself what qualifies that person to call him/herself an expert.

Posted by a wannabe social media expert.

Here’s a neat application from TwitterGrader.

Once you’ve signed up, you can get the TwitSnip application that allows to to tweet directly from another web site.

Say you are on a web site and then want to tweet the content from there, you need only highlight the content you wish to tweet about and click on the TwitSnip icon in your toolbar.

It then automatically copies the text and inserts a shortened URL as well. It loads it in a window with your Twitter user details and you need only press the “Post to @…” button and that copy is automatically posted to your twitter acount.

If you are reading this from a url on my twitter account then you have indeed seen it in action!

1. Your opinion on some issue in 140 characters
2. A URL link to a site, blog, YouTube, etc where you’ve seen something worth passing on.
3. A retweet.
4. A link to your own blog / web site where you’ve posted your own original content.

so, what else is there to tweet about?

Okay, sat down and wrote down 10 city names at random to see whether they have official twitter profiles. Got lots of stuff on Olympics, shopping, weather, jobs, etc but found very little official city profiles. See below:

• London: no
• Rio: no
• Cape Town: no
• Berlin: no
• Rome: no
• Paris: no
• Beijing: no
• Singapore: yes, visitsingapore
• New York: no
• Toronto: yes, torontocouncil

do you see a gap somewhere too?

This from the latest Marketing Pilgrim newsletter:

In a recent MarketingProfs survey 425 Twitter users were asked a series of questions about their use of Twitter. There where some interesting findings, including why we use the micro-blogging service.

Twitter users were asked to rate the reasons why they participate, on a scale from 1 to 5 (with 1=strongly disagree and 5=strongly agree):

I find it exciting to learn new things from people”: Average score 4.65
I value getting information in a timely manner”: Average score 4.58
I like to be connected to lots of people”: Average score 3.91
I want to generate new business”: Average score 3.70
I find it gratifying to have people follow me”: Average score 3.64

Curiously, despite a strong showing for being “connected to lots of people” only 34% of users agree it’s important to follow those that follow you. Not quite sure how that gels with their desire to make lots of connection. Oh well.

Lastly, despite spending an average of almost 3 hours a day on Twitter, we’re apparently not discouraged when we tweet and get nothing back but crickets–only 24% of us have our egos bruised when we tweet with no replies.

If you’re interested in the full study head to Marketing Charts

This from the Ragan forum on the topic:

This is a case for strategic questioning. In many cases Twitter resembles an online conference or trade show. If you examine most industry categories on Twitter, competitors are following each other in almost every instance.

As long as a competitor is presenting a quality presence, it does more help exposing your brand to that audience as it harms you brand integrity from exposure to the other brand.

In many cases, this is about properly identifying project niches on Twitter and securing that niche. Reaching out and rallying the core supporters is more important than worrying about the 10% of cross-contaminated or impartial consumers.

More importantly: WORKLOAD. Trying to launch multiple Twitter accounts for a singular client is a sizable task. If a Twitter manager has a hard time updating/monitoring one account… they are doomed to failure when given the daily task of using multiple ones.

to join the discussion , go to myragan.com

If like me, you’ve had your share of twitter, it is time to start considering flutter.

See this video for more!

well, it’s really only a screenshot of something that really imtrigued me today.

Every-one who is on Twitter is either  bragging about their number of followers, talking about others who have many followers, looking at their position on Twittergrader or even paying for people to follow them in order to tell them what they have to say.

To then come accross some-one with 948 followers, yet not a single update, really got me thinking about this tool….