thanks, watched.

Brian,

Great point, something I have been wrestling with as
a marketing consultant. I'll never call myself a guru of anything, but
how does one know their level of competency in SM? I know a little,
tho Aaron Strout says I know a lot, and I'm in the midst of marketing
a company using SM in addition to direct mail, PPC and traditional
marketing methods, but at what point can I be confident enough to say
"I can help you figure out your SM strategy"?

So you are
right, but one logical SM entry ramp (not the only one, mind you)
would naturally take one through the personal branding experience
first, right? The better question is how do you take what you have
learned to build online awareness of you as a person and extend it to
companies or brands within companies? At some point you just DO, don't
you? You take the step and offer your services and either win or lose,
or learn a little or a lot. And then you take on another client, and
another. At some point, guru status is achieved.

Or is the
issue the word "guru"? Any ideas on how to certify gurus?
/>Stephen Dill
@srdill

The video has some sync problem...

Anyway I agree with you
completely. Driving a big brand is always harder than driving a
personal brand..

But I have to say that the number of
'people' whom you can reach via a social media plays an important role
too.

If a company goes to a 'real' social media expert and
asks for advice to promote a particular product via social media, the
expert will probably come up with some strategies that will work best
for that particular product, however with that advice if the client
goes and implements the strategy himself...its very unlikely to be
successful (considering the fact that he doesn't have a powerful
profile in the social media).

So ultimately it sort of
comes down to - how creative you are and your social media strategy
plan ...and how many people you can reach to...and your influence over
them :)

@thepuck well said.

Social media is a tool. A tool for knowledge, socializing, promotion,
whatever, but just a tool, another arm of technology. It's like
marketing yourself as the "Hammer Guru" and then saying hammers can do
anything from hammering in nails to doing your taxes; it makes unclear
and confused claims about something that is very new, and claims
expertise in something that does not make sense. I say if you claim
you are an expert in social media, the next question is "An expert in
doing what with social media?" because there is a world of difference
between lolcats and tech blogging, and world of difference between
marketing a blog through Twitter vs. a product through Twitter.

I reccently had a client ask me, how can we make facebook work for us.
I thought this would have been easy to answer until i actuallly
thought about. its been three days, and I still can't figure it out. I
mean sure they can get friends and network with potential customers,
but really, thats not going to help them, why? because what they do is
boring. You are right Brian. It is extremely hard to market in social
media because essentially you have to think of a way to get your
product or service to be "sexy" or worthy of talking about, and thats
harder than it looks or sounds. I am not a SMM Guru by any means. but
don't tell my clients that!

Amen.

what the fuck is social media?

Seriously. You're not a guru until people know about your results
before they get to you. Yeah, you know more about it than your
neighbor up the block. Maybe even the next company over. But yeah,
talk to me when you can get bloggers to talk about Floor Tiles. Then
you can rock with the fam, LOL.

Ya man, as we were talking about this... My peeve was people touting
to be a SMM because they know how to tweet and create a myspace page.
whoopty doo! Social media is merely a tool to an overall marketing
strategy.