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So many people claim expertise in social marketing while so few actually have any that it’s not always easy to figure out who to trust to help you navigate what is still for most an unchartered territory.

Here are a few tips to marketers looking for a helping hand to start experimenting with social media. These are simple things inspired by personal experience and a good dose of common sense, always my best weapon…

1. If someone tells you they are an expert in social marketing, they are probably not… The field of social media is still very new and changing at light speed. There have been a few social marketing success stories but not enough to draw definite patterns in such a fast evolving environment. People who tell you they know exactly what you need to do are either taking you for a ride, or worse, haven’t grasped the complexity of what they are supposed to be experts of.
2. Check out your ‘expert’ for yourself. The least you can expect for someone operating in social media is for them to use the right tools for themselves and build their own brand image. Where do they blog? Can you find them on Facebook, YouTube, Linkedin, Flickr, Twitter, etc.? Do they show up in a simple Google search? Get a sense of who they are and how they use social media tools. In the process, you’ll get more knowledgeable yourself!
3. Has your ‘expert’ already added value to your business? I love this rule because it really addresses 2 important things at once. The first is whether or not that person is truly knowledgeable in this field. Very few businesses are on the cutting edge of social media and chances are that someone with deep knowledge in the field can contribute even before they meet with you. The second is whether or not that person really gets it. What do I mean by that? Unlike traditional marketing, social marketing, and social media in general, require reciprocity and transparency. You need to show your cards first before others decide to trust you. Have they?
4. Dog and pony show allergy. Maybe I should have started there as it’s probably the easiest way to screen out phonies: no company fancy 50-slide Powerpoint presentation with effects and no special website set up for this meeting with the Web2.0 bells and whistles. To give you an example, I attended a discussion last week on social media and the keynote speaker had prepared a total of 6 ugly slides to drive the conversation: he spent all his time thinking about the content of what to say and write, none about formatting. Great way to gain street cred and a great meeting.
5. How many zeros to the proposal? Budget is another way to tell who you have in front of you. I dare anyone to convince me any company should spend a 6 figure budget to start a social marketing project. Over the course of a whole campaign, you might end up spending that and more, but by small increments and by learning along the way what works and what doesn’t. If you are still recovering from a budget discussion on social marketing, you are probably talking to a good ol’ ad agency boy hiding behind buzz terms (see rule 7) and a fancy website.
6. Free! Before you spend big money on social marketing – let me rephrase, before you spend any money on social marketing, have you considered the following: is your company on Twitter yet? How about Facebook? Maybe a group on LinkedIn? Do you answer questions in Yahoo Answers? Shall I continue? If none of these things sound appealing to your ‘expert’, it’s because there isn’t enough money to be made for him there, not necessarily because you shouldn’t do them…
7. Language please! Here is another easy way to tell who you have in front of you. Do you hear “viral marketing”, “UGC”, “building brand equity”? All not good signs… See American Shelf Life for more. Also, if anyone talks to you about “banner ads”, have them escorted out of the building.
8. Fake doesn’t cut it. Another way to tell the people who really don’t get it is to see if their first approach is to try to rig the system and offer to trigger a “viral buzz” (argh! see above) by faking ratings, fans, etc. This is the old school trick of buying the first million copies of a new album to get it at the top of the charts… Let me address this specifically to the geniuses at EMI and Universal (if they still work there) who had interns add friends to MySpace band pages: it doesn’t work!
9. How old is your ‘expert’? I resent discrimination in any way shape or form but I figured that as I stand on the wrong side of this one, maybe people would forgive me. Without elaborating too much, there is a huge generation gap that people who didn’t grow up with MySpace, IM, and Warcraft have much trouble filling when it comes to truly understanding social media. I encourage you to read Mark Prensky’s research on this who introduced the concepts of digital natives and digital immigrants.
10. Speed trumps quality. This field is changing so fast that the only way to stay in the game is to do something. Too many planning sessions, brainstorm exercises, concept reviews and discussions slow you down. Prefer working with someone who is responsive, fast thinking, and not afraid of risks. Running short experiments we can learn from is Ignesis’ bread and butter and I could ramble for some time on this but I won’t… In short, you’re better off receiving a one line email with typos from his or her Blackberry within the hour after you meet instead of a detailed summary of your meeting the next day, articulating next steps, and scheduling the next brainstorming session…

I hope these help you pick the right person for you. Try to hide your smirk if you come across one of the stereotypes I describe. These people do exist!

Please share your own tips on this with the rest of us. We’ll all get smarter.

A conversation with a friend last night prompted me to write this post.  We were having a surprisingly serious conversation over at the Bitter End waiting for Oz Noy to set up (for those of you into avant-garde music, he’s a sick guitar player) about the demise of Microsoft. I told him that Microsoft has been dead to me for five years already and his response was: “don’t go against cash!”.

Actually, “Don’t go against cash” is such well established motto that it has become a wild card in business conversations.  I never understood it though: to me a sound business model supersedes cash. Of course, cash and a good business model are tightly related, and cash is in most instances the tangible proof of a prosperous business. Makes sense but only to a certain point…

Cash heavy companies usually combine strong profits and high market cap valuation. In other words, the market trusts that they will keep making money – actually what investors value most is a company’s ability to predict profits (a whole other discussion). For business as usual, this is a great way to look at a company, screen out underperformers, and reward rock stars.

Clayton Christensen from HBS explains it best in his Innovator’s Dilemma that this very process rewarding market leaders is at the core of the inability for incumbents to bring to market radical innovations (disruptive innovations in Christensen’s terms) or perform business model shifts.

In the context of a disruptive market (defined as a change of paradigm due to social, policy or technology shift), cash actually stands in the way of a company’s very ability to change gear to survive.

Back to Microsoft. Here is a company that has everything to succeed: money, talent, unparalleled customer base, and an incredible wealth of projects whether developed internally or acquired from promising startups. Yet, they have been falling behind Google pretty much on every initiative where the two compete (maybe with the exception of IM). Why is that?

When MS launches a new project, they have to answer two questions before it hits the market: 1- is this compatible other MS products? 2- how does this project impact MS’ business model?

The first question results in a painful and lengthy development cycle, explaining the fact that they often lag behind. It also contributes cluttering a new product with bells and whistles before the core concept can even be tested by the market. See Google Labs for a very different way to launch new products.

The second question has a much deeper impact on Microsoft’s sustainability as it leads to most initiatives being shelved before getting released. Microsoft operates and makes money through a licensing model. New projects that don’t serve that model will be deprioritized and those undermining it will be killed.

Google without the same legacy can launch into bold new projects, offering free apps like Google docs, progressively making MS offerings (from Windows to the office suite) less and less relevant.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is stuck between a rock and a hard place, unable to compete on the same turf with Google without putting their whole revenue model on the line, thus getting penalized by the investment community, thus stripped from their cash.

Call me crazy but I’m going all in against cash!

In an interview with Tara Hunt, Tony Hsieh and Rachael Brown explain how Zappos breaks away from other businesses in the overcrowded clothing and apparel retail industry: the secret is a fresh business vision very much ingrained in every aspect of what they do.

Zappos’ culture doesn’t strike me as being so radically different from many other startups. What is quite impressive though is that they seem to manage to keep this entrepreneur early-stage startup spirit and culture while on the verge of becoming a $1B company.

I’m curious to see if and how Zappos manages to keep its identity while scaling.

Consumers are outraged that the increased price of oil translates into high gas prices. The media is even pointing out the not-so-strange parallel that the 17% increase in profits for Exxon in Q1 corresponds to a 17% price increase during the same time at the pump…Airlines are desperate and announce drastic changes in their pricing, flight schedule, and even flight speed (who knew) to make up for skyrocketing energy prices.

Even shareholders don’t seem to be thrilled about Exxon’s $10.9 billion quarterly net income performance judging by the initial media reports.

Oil prices have gone so high that they have become for some a new gold standard in times of looming recession and depressed US$. Speculating on oil of course contributes to higher prices, thus inflation, thus economic downturn, thus more oil speculation…

So, what makes me happy with this despite this catastrophic scenario I just described? Actually, the crisis itself is actually my reason to be optimistic. I think we are in need of a good old fashioned energy crisis.

Why?

The industries the most (negatively) affected by this crisis are the automotive and the airline industries. Both could use a major shakedown. We know that large corporations and governments’ openness to change is very limited in general and almost inexistent in times of prosperity. Haven’t we all heard the old adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”? The good thing with a structural crisis like the one that is now at our doorsteps is that it inflicts pain to business-as-usual, and therefore makes radical change more accessible.

The transportation industry is vital to our way of life and players in the auto world and airlines now need to step up to the plate and make some hard decisions to initiate and follow through on structural changes to find new ways to go about their businesses.

Undoubtedly many incumbents won’t survive the shift of direction and gear, but do they have a choice?

Since the start of ZipCar, I have been wondering why one-way zipcars don’t exist - and by that I mean picking up a car in one location and dropping it off in another. I fully realize the logistical challenge and associated cost but the upside seems so great that it kept baffling me that they don’t try it.

I even asked ZipCar’s member services and got this for an answer:

“Unfortunately there is no plans to implement something like this any time soon, but we do realize there is a demand for it and it is one of the most popular suggestions we receive. It would be an extremely difficult system to set up but anything is possible in the future.”

So if I rephrase: there is a demand for it but it’s too hard to do… I don’t buy it.

Then, the other night I went to Pecha Kucha where Robin Chase, founder and former CEO of ZipCar was speaking. This is where I understood why they are not doing this: philosophically, the one-way ZipCar doesn’t match the company’s values.

ZipCar is about on-demand transportation. In other words, why own a car if you can always have one when you need it? From that perspective, the one-way ZipCar is a very bad idea because it competes with public transportation and cabs more than someone driving their own car. Thus, it doesn’t contribute to reducing the number of cars per person. This is where the glitch is in this idea.

Giving up your own car is a pretty big deal for most people and one of the main reasons why services like ZipCar don’t scale very fast. So, what if your first contact with ZipCar is simply a convenient ride somewhere (e.g. to the airport) and doesn’t require you kissing goobye to your beloved vehicle. Wouldn’t you be tempted to sign up then?

Once car owners see value in being part of the service, the pitch becomes much easier to new members and so does selling people on giving up their vehicle once they have had first hand experience with the service.

A lower tech example of this is already taking place in Paris with a city project called Velib’.

So I stick to my idea that one-way ZipCars would be a great initiative for on-demand car services like ZipCar to scale and reach a much wider user base.

Ignesis’ business is to participate along with talented and daring entrepreneurs in the development of ground breaking initiatives.

We often find our partners-in-crime and ideas by sharing a thought or an observation that challenges conventional wisdom. These conversations can spark new projects and improve existing ones.

This weblog is intended for the Ignesis community to share ideas, tidbits of news, things we find intriguing or annoying, and for you to be an active participant in these conversations.

Our main focus for these discussions is of the set of markets where we have built some expertise and interest.

If you’d like to engage into other topics and industries, send us your suggestions at blog@ignesis.com