Today is Bastille Day – which is how the rest of the world calls France’s “Fete Nationale,” or simply “le 14 Juillet.”

This day in 1789, the people of Paris stormed the Bastille (Louis XVI’s political prison) and started down a road that eventually led to France becoming a Republic, just a few short years after the United States of America. And though the government of France doesn’t always side with US foreign policy, France and the United States have been staunch allies for well over two centuries.

So feel free to eat a croissant or two today, wear a beret, pop open a nice bottle of Bordeaux, and even watch the Tour De France. It’s all good.

Joyeux Anniversaire, Republique Francaise. I miss not being there for your birthday anymore.

Via Amber Naslund (@ambercadabra) on Twitter yesterday – This (posted on mashable) is not the way to go about hiring an experienced Social Media Practitioner to get a practice up and running:

NEEDED IMMEDIATELY: INTELLIGENT SOCIAL MEDIA CONSULTANT:
Intelligent Social Media Consultant to support a consumer PR agency based in NYC. You will not be working in-house – so you must be willing to be on call for a flat, monthly retainer fee.

The most necessary requirement of this position – is an ability to create in-depth Social Media proposals with an eye towards driving a PR campaign, then helping those proposals to be executed – either through your own technical expertise, or by appropriately functioning as a Project Manager. Examples of your writing and previous proposals are required.

SKILL-REQUIREMENTS:
• Knowing your trade, if you’re not 100% up-to-date on the latest and greatest tools for social media (including Facebook corporate pages, Twitter, and Social Media News Releases, just to name a few examples), please do not apply.
• You need to understand the world of PR, and how it can translate to Social Media. We want you to know great examples of successful PR/social media campaigns, what a company’s competitors are doing, and how we can replicate that to create similar success stories.
• Must have: first-rate writing skills
• Must have: ability to consistently generate creative ideas for corporate clients and explain those ideas in-depth, in writing, and in a proposal
• Must be willing and able: to create multiple proposals in a week if necessary
• You must be willing to attend on-site corporate client meetings when necessary
• You must be detail oriented and quantitative (you will be called on to perform Social Media Audits, for example
• You must understand Social Media metrics – (we are always asked to show an ROI to clients, you need to not only have creative ideas but also have the skill to know how to measure the campaigns you help us to create)

Our PR campaigns draw on the full arsenal of Social Media tools, and for the purpose of the proposals you create for us and for the campaigns you oversee, you will need strong resources and up-to-the-minute industry knowledge to execute: Twitter feeds (and Corporate Twitter Feeds), Facebook (Corporate), Myspace (Corporate), Blogs/Vlogs, Optimized Press Releases, Social Media News Releases, Mobile Marketing Campaigns (not as frequent), Online Marketing/ Advertising, Online Newsrooms, Viral Videos, Photosharing, Podcasting & Webcasts, SEO, Microsites, Widgets & Wiki Updates

COMPENSATION:
Flat Fee of $1,000 per month, plus additional commissions on campaigns you help us to land, plus other work-load related bonuses

First of all, I would ask this PR agency what happens once these winning proposals have been written and approved by the client: Who executes on these programs and campaigns if not the Social Media honcho? If this is going to work, someone has to build and manage these programs, right? If not the Social Media “consultant” who wrote out the plan, whom? (Fail #1).

Fail #2: $1,000 per month? Are you kidding me? For all of that? (writing proposals, meeting with clients, Social Media audits, ROI measurement.) Yeah. Good luck with that. (It’s only NYC: I’m sure anyone can get by just fine on $12K per year – pre-tax.) Not that those skills are worth ten times that.

Question to the company responsible for this req: Where do I apply for the $800 per month CMO job please?

Man, it’s good to see smart companies still willing to pay big bucks for big talent. Way to go.

“When corporate marketing departments dream of brand design, they only dream as far as they need. The expensive and time consuming process of extending the brand into an interactive concept is usually pushed off until it becomes absolutely necessary.”Unfortunately, by the time some serious rethinking is required, a lot of people have gotten stuck in the mud of static branding. It’s completely natural for companies to resist straying from the handful of predefined styles that were never meant to address web forms, widgets, calendars and menuing systems.

“Of all the arguments for modifying brand attributes to better suit a digital experience, the most compelling is this: The way users feel about their experience is inseparable from the way they feel about your brand.

“This maxim holds true for brick-and-mortar experiences as well as for digital interactions. A restaurant with great food but incredibly long lines and a bad wait staff will experience brand damage. The user experience is bad, and people will look elsewhere. The same thing will happen if your users get baffled by confusing menus, hard-to-read text, and perplexing layouts. The user experience is bad, and people will look elsewhere.

“The way a user feels when they come in contact with a brand interaction point will implicitly shape their image of the brand itself. This realization is a powerful tool for user experience professionals and can help snap clients and peers out of static thinking.

“It is helpful to remember that even the most accomplished companies have become experts at modifying brand attributes to suit interactive experiences. This is done without sacrificing brands, but rather by extending them.“

Amen.

Have a great Monday, everyone!

I had a great conversation with someone about the topic of leaders vs. managers earlier this week, and was reminded of this post from about a year ago:

(Note – If you are an HR professional, you may not like what follows.)

“Managers make sure that work follows an established process. They don’t like change. Leaders, on the other hand, are restless creatures like gamblers who get excited about doing things a new way.”Now, here’s the problem: There’s a great need for talent and a glut of unqualified candidates. It’s going to take a leader to figure out how to move forward. And Recruiting is full of managers.

“One solution: take recruiting away from HR and give it to marketing people who know how to sell. Another: give it to the operational leaders who have the knowledge needed to assess the candidates technical skills.”

Per Kevin Wheeler, via The Recruiting Animal blog.

Whether you think that’s genius or complete bunk, read Kevin’s entire article here. Whatever side of the fence you happen to be on, it is well worth ten minutes.

By the way, I’m in the ATL today, so I will be slower than a slug when it comes to approving and responding to comments.

This post is the continuation of a discussion started on Marketing Profs’ LinkedIn group on July 7th. (If you don’t yet subscribe to the group, consider becoming a part of it.)

Today’s video is actually two videos in one:

The first half (Part 6 of our Social Media ROI series) deals with defining ROI once and for all.

The second half (Part 7 of our Social Media ROI series) starts touching on the “how” of calculating the ROI of Social Media by outlining the investment-action-reaction-impact-return narrative.

If the video doesn’t load for you, you can go watch it here.

Let me start today’s post with a confession: Like many people in the business world, I have  abused the  term “ROI” from time to time. Yes, I admit it, even I have used “ROI” as a relative term on a number of occasions in the past. I’m not proud of it, but there it is.

Here are some examples of what I am talking about:

• Q: What’s the ROI of adding 100 miles to my weekly cycling training?
• A: Faster race times.

• Q: What’s the ROI of writing better blog posts?
• A: More traffic on my blog.

It’s easy to do, especially since sometimes, what you invest into something isn’t necessarily $$$. Perhaps you invested sweat. Perhaps you invested time. Perhaps you invested emotions. It doesn’t really matter. The point is that when the currency is variable, how you measure the “I” in ROI becomes variable as well. For lack of a better term, you start to refer to any kind of positive outcome as “ROI” even when you shouldn’t. It’s an easy habit to fall into, and if you aren’t careful, your definition of ROI can begin to get a little fuzzy. So I get it: I understand why this is confusing to so many folks, especially when it gets thrown into the world of Social Media.

But I’ve also spent enough time with executives (on the client side)  to know that when THEY talk about ROI, the currency is NOT relative. In business terms, the currency implied in any ROI question or discussion is cold hard cash. Period.

Marketing professionals need to understand this: If the investment (the “I”) is $$$, then the return also has to be $$$. It can’t be eyeballs or impressions or clickthroughs. You have to tie your results to a $ amount. Anything short of that, and you’re not proving your value to your boss or client.

It isn’t to say that eyeballs, impressions and clickthroughs aren’t important. They are. But they’re one link (of the action-reaction-outcome narrative) shy of ROI. (They don’t tie the investment to the actual return.)

The best way to explain that narrative is this way:

$ Investment by company –> Action –> Reaction –> Non-financial impact –> Financial impact $

As explained above in the video, the relationship between a company’s investment and the return on that investment pretty much looks like this:

What happens between the investment and the financial impact (the return on that investment) is VERY important. And we’ll talk about the importance of monitoring and measuring it in order to tie the investment to the associated financial impact (and ROI) in future posts. But for now, I want to focus on the fact that eyeballs, impressions, positive WOM and social mention, even click-throughs and net new visits to websites do not constitute relevant currency when we are talking about ROI. Social media is no different here than any other business endeavor in this regard.

Impressions, eyeballs, net new visitors, etc. are forms of non-financial impact. In order to determine ROI, you have to take them to the next step: How they affect financial impact. THEN and only then can you tie the original investment to the return (financial impact/outcome).

I know that bringing “media” measurement into the ROI equation is tempting , especially for folks with agency  or media measurement backgrounds. That’s what the model has been for PR, Advertising and other marketing-specific firms for decades. And again media measurement is vital here, but when it comes to calculating ROI, that type of measurement is a lot like calculating a crop’s yield by estimating how many of X number of planted seeds will germinate come harvest time. It doesn’t work that way. You have to roll up your sleeves come harvest time *and physically count what the actual yield is. You actually have to do the work. ROI isn’t about potential. It’s about actual performance.

(*Luckily there is no seasonal constraint like a “harvest” in the business world, so ROI measurement – like most performance measurement – can be continuous.)

In order to adequately determine ROI, you must first understand how all the pieces fit. You have to see the entire equation, from start to finish. There is an order to how things happen, how, and why. You have to see  how A leads to B leads to C in order to understand how an investment turns into a success or a failure, and to what degree. You also have to understand that the value of a pair of eyeballs, of an impression, is subjective until that pair of eyeballs actually does something. Then the body attached to that pair of eyeballs becomes one of three things: A browser, an influencer or a transacting customer. The first two don’t actualize a financial impact (yet). The third does. That’s where we want to focus when dealing with ROI.

Though we can infer and assign an estimated $ value to browsers and influencers, these values are subjective at best , usually measured in hindsight, and subject to change at any moment for any reason. So their value still falls into the category of non-actualized potential for now. (We will look at the financial impact of influencers in an upcoming post. No worries.) For the purpose of ROI calculation, however, you want to work with cold hard numbers. Not estimates, not potential, not yet-to-happen transactions, but “actualized dollars.” Real revenue from actual sales. Financial returns you can take to the bank and tie step by step through the above chain back to the initial investment.

(Incidentally, financial impact (ROI) manifests itself either as increased revenue or cost savings. Sometimes, ROI is revenue-neutral but cut costs internally. The model I just described above applies ti revenue-generated ROI.)

All of this to say that we have to be VERY careful not to a) mistake non-financial impact with ROI, and b) not to try and redefine “ROI” when dealing with business execs. (They won’t buy into “Return on Influence” or “Return on Interest” for very long, and anyone using these terms runs the risk of losing credibility with pragmatic decision makers in the C-suite.) Social Media is fun, but this is not a game.  If a client doesn’t ask about ROI, great! Awesome. They probably get how Social Media is going to help them build relationships with customers and improve everything about their business. So to them, ROI is implied. It’s understood. It isn’t something they are going to worry about anytime soon. But when a client DOES ask about ROI, you have to a) understand what they are asking, and b) know how to adequately answer their questions and put measurement systems in place that will suit their needs and particular culture.

I hope this was helpful. Next, we’ll talk about the importance of timelines in the ROI determination process. (The next piece of the puzzle.)

By the way, if the video didn’t load properly for you or if you are accessing this post from a mobile device, you can go watch the video here (thanks Viddler).

http://wray-mccann.com

Call me lazy, but instead of writing something insightful for you guys today, I’m going to share some of my favorite finds from my morning’s croissant-induced online browsing.

All quotations courtesy of Pulled Quotes.

On finding out what works:

“I have no earthly idea what really works. I don’t know if it’s lunch or that powerpoint or the Christmas card I sent last year. But you know what? You have no clue what works either. I’ll keep experimenting if you will.”    -  Seth Godin

On why blogs work:

“Bloggers drive blogs, share price drives traditional media. Blogging is personal, traditional media is corporate.“    – Mark Cuban

On remembering what creativity really is:

“Creativity is an act of open disobedience against the norms. Creativity is an act of courage.“

-     Chris Bailey

On innovation, grabbing life by the horns, and not pissing your life away:

“Do things that are gaspworthy.”

That was one of the main messages delivered by Tom Peters, the influential business thinker and management guru, in his speech yesterday at Epsilon’s Integrated Marketing Symposium 2006 at the Quail Lodge in Carmel, CA.

“Do cool stuff that make people gasp,” said Peters, who looked older and angrier than in his “In Search of Excellence Days” (the book he co-authored with Richard Waterman in 1982 that was hailed by NPR as one of the Top Business Books of the Century). “Don’t piss away your life.”

He changed his speech at the last moment after having learning this week that one of his best friends has a terminal illness, Peters said.

Also noted

“Innovation comes “not from market research or focus groups, but from pissed off people.”

DM News

On passion and work:

On retaining talent:

“One of my favorite cliches is “there is no such thing as indentured servitude”. I use that line to talk about the fact that talent can’t be bought and sold. It must be retained with something more than money.“    – Fred Wilson

So there you go. Now we’re all on the same wavelength. Have a great Monday!

Technorati Tags: seth godin, fred wilson,Mark Cuban, Chris Bailey, Tom Peters, Mark Thompson, Stuart Emery, Jerry Porras, marketing wisdom, creativity, innovation, advertising, passion, marketing, blogging

Eloquence, courage and passion:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The United States of America: Spitting in the face of tyranny since July 4, 1776.

I’ve loved you seemingly since the moment I was born. Happy Birthday, Sweetheart.

You’re always in beta. Always. If you think you aren’t, you’re already falling behind and bleeding relevance.

What does being in Beta mean? It means being in perpetual test mode. It means constantly asking “how could I do this better,” even when this worked just fine. How can I listen better? How could I improve customer service? How can I make my billing process smoother? How could we improve the UI/UX of our websites? How can I engage my user community even better? How could this brochure have been better?

I know what you’re thinking: Poor kid. He’s terminally obsessive-compulsive. (Actually, I’m just compulsive, not obsessive, but that’s a topic for another day.)

The point is this: The moment you start thinking that you have found the perfect model, the second you start adopting a “let’s not change anything” mentality, you’re screwed. The “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke” saying I hear a lot in the South is may have been pretty good advice a hundred years ago, but it isn’t anymore. Not if you want your company to stay competitive. Not if you want to see your company grow. Not if you want to see chronic improvement in everything you do.

Check out today’s video if you haven’t already. And if it doesn’t launch for you, go watch it here. (Thanks, Viddler!)

Interestingly, the “you’re always in Beta” mindset that I am talking about today seriously reminds me of the mindset athletes and coaches get into when it comes to improving performance. Say you’re currently a 24:00 5K runner, and you want to relive your college glory days by running an 18:00 5K a year from now. How do you do it? Simple: By stressing your system one little bit at a time. By challenging your comfort zone with every run. Going from 24:00 to 23:55, then 23:50, then 23:45 for the same distance, and so on. Turning up the heat and the intensity for a few weeks, then giving your body a chance to adapt. To plateau. And then starting over with a new cycle of stress and adaptation followed by a rest period. During that time, you are constantly testing your boundaries, monitoring success and failure, learning what works and what doesn’t. (And yes, measuring your progress to know what works and what doesn’t.) Pretty basic stuff.

The alternative would be to keep running the same 5K route every day at the exact same speed, in the exact same way. What would happen? Well, you would become pretty good at running a 5K  in 24:00. Comfortable? Sure. But whatever happened to improvement? See where I am going with this?

Okay, now let’s complicate things a little bit:

As a triathlete, training and competing in what essentially amounts to three sports (swimming, cycling and running) adds some pretty substantial layers of complexity. Not only do I have to figure out how to train for three specific sports, but I have to figure out how to combine and integrate all three in a way that doesn’t lead to injury or burnout. I also have to fit all three in my already busy schedule. Then I have to consider how to time my training cycles to coincide with specific races. In addition, I have to incorporate changes in nutrition and hydration based on my workouts, my training mode, outside temperatures, etc. And if I get into my head that I am going to train for a marathon, half Ironman or full-on mac-daddy Ironman, all of these variables take on a level of complexity I can’t even begin to explain in one blog post. How much Gatorade should I drink per hour in 94 degree temperatures at 80% of my maximum heart rate? How many energy gels can I absorb per hour without getting sick to my stomach? What cadence should I adopt to sustain an average speed of 21mph for 112 miles? Only one way to find out: Test it.

And I haven’t even talked about gear. Will the improved aerodynamics gained from dropping my aerobars down 2 millimeters shave 20 seconds off my 40K time? Maybe… but as a result, will my upper body’s new angle offset my hip angle enough to reduce my power output or stress my hip flexors enough that I will start cramping up 5 miles into the run? How will I find out? There’s only one way: Getting out there and testing that theory. It’s clipboard and stopwatch time for the next six weeks.

Should I go with a disc wheel or a deep dish rim for my next race? How will I know which works better for me on a moderately hilly course in 15mph crosswinds? Only one way: I have to go test each wheel configuration on a variety of courses in completely different wind conditions. Then I’ll know what works best in specific course conditions.

Rear-mounted bottle-cages or frame-mounted? Aero helmet or regular helmet? Motion control shoes or racing flats? Test test test test test. You get the picture.

Call it an occupational benefit or a pre-existing condition, but being a triathlete kind of trains you to be in a perpetual Beta mindset. And it isn’t a stretch to jump from the world of competitive endurance sports to the world of business performance. Different application, but same principles and same basic methodology: Ask, test, observe, validate, learn, repeat.

But before you do all this – the testing, the experimentation, the analysis and learning and adaptation – you have to make a choice. You have to pick a camp. You have to decide whether you are satisfied with your business performance as it is today (”good enough” is good enough for you and your customers), or hungry for improvement.

There’s no right or wrong answer here. It doesn’t matter what camp you decide to align yourself with: The one happy with the way things are or the one looking to kick ass a little more each day. What matters is that your decision work for you. But let’s be clear about the impact that your choice will have on your business: Sticking with a “let’s not change anything” mindset will not earn you more customers, increase customer loyalty or generate more sales. Where you are today is exactly where you will be tomorrow. If you’re lucky. Eventually, perhaps not next week or next month or next year, but eventually, this mindset will seal your doom. A Beta mindset, however, will help you uncover ways to innovate, earn more customers, cut costs, increase customer and employee loyalty, improve product design and performance… You name it: Whatever the opportunity to improve, do do things better and smarter, may be, you will systematically uncover it in the same way that Apple, Nike, BMW, Cervelo, HBO, Michael Phelps, IDEO, Lance Armstrong, Comcast and Zappos have.

If you want your company to be best in class, to own a market or an industry, to be the trendsetter, the example to follow, the leader in a category, you must adopt a perpetual Beta mindset. You have to constantly stress your systems and processes. You have to turn every action into a test an look at every activity as an opportunity to experiment.You have to measure, analyze, learn, adapt and repeat the cycle over and over and over again.

Question everything.

Work harder than the next guy to build the best XYZ the world has ever seen, and then find ways to make it even better.

Perfection is a process, not a milestone.

Embrace a state of perpetual Beta.

Social Media Directors should know how to do their jobs without having to ask for help every five minutes:

So I look down and the (twitter) DM reads: “Hey, can you help me out? Not sure how to do this. How do I use Twitter to gain traction for my company? Thanks!” I stare at it for a while and decide to blow it off for now, not because I have better things to do (which I do) and not because I don’t really have time to build a Twitter business plan for this person right this second (which I don’t), but because that DM comes from a newly minted Social Media Director at a fairly visible company who basically just asked me to help them hold on to a job they obviously didn’t deserve to be hired for.

I slide my Blackberry Storm into my back pocket and find myself flashbacking to 11th grade: It’s final exams time and I am in hour two of IB Biology. The essay section. One of the kids in my class is behind me, gently kicking my chair, whispering, begging me to move my scrap/notes where they can read them.

And I am almost tempted to do it.

That same conversation starts taking place in my head. I’m in a position to help someone in need.  But wait… cheating is cheating. Don’t do it. But still, I feel that I should help. Arrrgh…

I reach for the blackberry, launch Twitterberry (which is not my favorite app, by the way), and respond: “Wait… You got the job, right? Don’t you know how to do this? Isn’t that why you were hired?”

For hours, no response. And then it comes. “Yeah, but I’m in a little over my head. I’ve never worked with Social Media in a business context before. “

Again. This from a Director-level individual now working for a pretty well known company.

Not cool.

I suffer through similar exchanges weekly now, and I am not happy about it. What does this trend say about what types of people are going after Social Media management jobs – and landing them with alarming frequency these days? At the very least, I am worried about how this is going to end up hurting Social Media’s legitimacy in the business world. (Watch the video for my reasoning on this specific point.)

If the video doesn’t launch, you can go watch it here. Thanks, Viddler).

With this disturbing development weighing on me more and more these past few months, I’ve been thinking long and hard about what is going on in the Social Media “management” world, and I’ve basically come down to two conclusions: The first (which we’ll get back to in a few minutes) is that the qualifications of Social Media Directors may not be entirely clear to the folks interviewing and hiring applicants for those positions. The second is that as a result of this, confusion, we are now looking at three distinct types of Social Media Directors/Managers scampering about in the corporate world, some good, some okay, and some really bad.

The first type is the best type: These folks are super smart, talented, experienced in a broad range of disciplines, have an established footprint in the Social Media space (through blogs, Twitter, Ning, various communities), are recognized as thought leaders (or as emerging thought leaders), and are unquestionably passionate about what they do. Folks like Chris Brogan, Frank Eliason, Amber Naslund, Mack Collier, Beth Harte, Valeria Maltoni, etc. These are folks who are truly writing the book on how to build social media practices and smoothly integrate them in the organizations they work with.

The second type isn’t quite as savvy, but it isn’t lacking in talent, smarts and enthusiasm. These are people who basically don’t know how to be Social Media directors yet, but are learning fast. And most importantly, they are completely open about the fact that they are still in that learning stage, which means that their employers are okay with it. In spite of the fact that they are still very junior, the companies they work for saw in them a lot of potential and decided to hire them toward that end. (I dig people like this a lot.)

The third type is what I would call the bad type. Not bad as in cool, but rather… bad as in unethical, inept and unprofessional. These are the con artists. The shams. The hacks. The folks whose egos and selfishness led them to a moment in their lives when they unapologetically took a job they knew they weren’t qualified for. And now here they are: Social Media Director for Company ABC, soon to move over to Company XYZ, and so on. One position validating the next, one impressive brand on their resume justifying consideration by the next, and so it goes: A perpetual daisy chain of high profile Social Media management job built on unadulterated douchebaggery and thinly-disguised mediocrity.

(Ironically, this third group tends to be the same one that perpetuates the notion that Social Media ROI either doesn’t exist or is “unwise” to try and measure. Yeah. Convenient, isn’t it?)

Before we go on, here are some red flags to help you identify deadbeat Social Media Directors:

Every time you see a major global consumer brand engaging with less than 5% of its active (vocal) customers on a popular Social Media platform like Twitter after 8-10 months of activity, you can bet that their Social Media Director belongs to that third category.

If every time you walk into your monthly status meeting with your new Social Media Director and ask them for the latest, they either talk to you about google analytics, confuse you with endless spreadsheets or launch into a “Social Media takes time” monologue, chances are that they belong to that third category.

If you ask your Social Media Director why their efforts aren’t scaling very fast or producing the numbers you expected and they give you a story about engagement not being a numbers game, chances are that they belong in that third category.*

If when you ask them for real business metrics, impact analysis and (god forbid) ROI and they either give you a blank stare or explain that these things don’t apply to Social Media, they probably belong to that third category.

And when you ask them how they plan to integrate Social Media into customer service, Human Resources, Public Relations, Marketing, Business Development or any other silo in your organization and they schedule a later meeting to address that instead of answering on the spot, guess what category they probably belong to.

The thing about that third category is that they’ll never admit that they don’t know something. Because they get by every day by producing massive amounts of bulls**t, they will automatically default to making something up on the spot or deflecting questions with well crafted excuses. That’s their most damning trait, and what gives them away every time: They always know, and they’re never wrong (except… they don’t, and they are, and now you’re wise to it).

* Simple test to prove or disprove a “depth before breadth” response:

First – On Twitter, look  at the number of brand mentions vs. the number of your brand’s account mentions. Big difference? Ask why. Then ask your Social Media Director what they are doing to raise awareness for your presence in the space. Breadth matters, no matter what your overpaid hack of a Social Media honcho tells you.

Second – Look at the number of comments directly aimed at your account. 20 per day? 50 per day? Now look at how many of these requests for attention were acknowledged with some sort of reply. 100%? 80%? Less than 25%? If your Social Media Director claims that they are focusing on depth of engagement instead of breadth, yet they only respond to less than half of the handshakes thrown at them daily, maybe it’s time you found out what he/she actually does with his/her time.

What should you be looking for in an applicant interested in becoming your next Social Media Director ?

I could go on with my indictment of poser Social Media Directors all day long, but I would rather put this post to a more productive use: Since so many of these hacks are getting through the recruiting filter, why don’t we focus on helping interviewers distinguish good applicants from bad ones, starting with some traits and skills they want and need in a Social Media Director. Think of this as a checklist for would-be Social Media Directors, and please feel free to add your own suggestions by leaving a comment.

• Applicant has developed and managed marketing programs before. Not just campaigns but programs.
• Applicant has had a continuous professional presence in the Social Media space (via blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Ning or other platforms) for at least one year.
• Applicant has managed a business blog and/or business community for a minimum of one year.
• Applicant has built or managed a community for longer than one year.
• Applicant has at least two years of experience managing projects and working across organizational silos.
• Applicant has managed a brand or product line for more than one year.
• Applicant has demonstrated a strong ability to forge lasting relationships across a variety of media platforms over the course of his/her career.
• Applicant understand the difference between vertical and lateral action when it comes to customer/community engagement – and has working knowledge of how to leverage both.
• Applicant demonstrates a thorough knowledge of the Social Media space, including usage and demographic statistics for the most popular/relevant platforms as well as a few niche platforms of his/her choice.
• Applicant has managed national market research projects.
• Applicant demonstrates a throrough understanding of the nuances between Social Media platforms and the communities they serve. (Example: MySpace vs. Facebook or YouTube vs. Seesmic)
• Applicant understands the breadth of tools and methods at his/her disposal to set goals and measure success in the Social Media space. (Applicant’s toolkit is not limited to Google analytics.)
• Applicant can cite examples of companies with successful social media programs and companies with ineffective social media programs. He/she can also argue comfortably why each was either successful or unsuccessful.
• Applicant has been active on Twitter for more than 8 months.
• Applicant knows who Chris Brogan, Jeremiah Owyang and Peter Kim are.
• Applicant is comfortable enough with business measurement methods to know the difference between financial impact (ROI) and non-financial impact. He/she also knows why the difference between the two is relevant.
• Applicant demonstrates the ability to build and manage a Social Media practice that works seamlessly with PR, product marketing, event management and customer support teams within the organization.
• Applicant has managed a work team for more than one year. He/she was responsible for the training and development of that team.
• Applicant has spent at least one year in a project management role outside of an ad agency, PR or other Marketing firm.
• Applicant can tell a personal story involving either Digg, Seesmic or both.
• Applicant has been responsible for managing a budget/P&L.
• Applicant demonstrates a high level of proficiency working with popular Social Media platforms and apps such as FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, Ning, Seesmic, YouTube, FriendFeed, WordPress and Tumblr.
• Applicant is capable of mapping out a basic Social Media monitoring plan on a cocktail napkin.
• Applicant is more excited about engagement, building an internal practice and finding out about your business’ pain points than he/she is about firebombing you with the full scope of their Social Media skills’ awesomeness.
• Applicant already has the framework of a Social Media plan for your company before he/she even walks through the front door, and thankfully, it doesn’t involve setting up a fan page on FaceBook.
• Applicant actually knows how to use Twitter to help your company build brand equityonline and offline without having to DM people for help.

Your turn. What do you think is missing from this checklist?

And how do we stop this kind of nonsense?

Photo by Matt A.

If brands start with people, great brands start with great people. Not great in the sense that they are wealthy or successful or influential (yet), but great in the sense that ego, self-righteousness and self-serving agendas aren’t part of the equation.

Instead, these people are devoted to a cause. Infected with an idea. Motivated by success measured in other people’s smiles and excitement and ownership of the things they do for them.

Need help getting into that kind of groove? Check out John Moore’s awesome post on Dan Sullivan’s Laws Of Lifetime Growth here. Not super recent, but timely.

I’m serious. Go check it out now. (No, not later, right now.) It’s that good. (Well… it’s really the ten laws that are good, but… same difference.)

What… you’re still here? Tsssk.

Technorati tags: service marketing, John Moore, Dan Sullivan, marketing.