Social Media
What do social media consultants do?
Out of all the social media consultants listed on InvestInSocial.com, we took a closer look to see what these individuals define as their strengths. What type of consulting are they actually providing clients?
Strengths on the social media company directory site, InvestInSocial.com, are consulting specialties in this case, client type, strategies, tactics, and platforms.
The 3 most mentioned words on their profiles were:
- Community
Facebook and Twitter make a lot of sense as the largest and most talked about social networks. The word community was mentioned as part of “community management” mostly as well as community development.Training, content, and monitoring also had good showings.
To give you the full picture we took all the strengths and specialties mentioned for these listings and created this word cloud.
It is worth noting that this list of consultants is by no means a comprehensive list. But it is a broad representation. Many of the consultants on this list are industry leaders working with Fortune 100 companies. And just as many are beginners looking to provide community management skills for a business.
It has been said before that the term “social media consultant” has become almost useless because of it’s varied use by so many levels of experience. One of the ways we hope to change that is through this directory. By including strengths, work examples, and soon, confirmed recommendations from actual clients.
If you have not already, check out Investinsocial.com, the new social media company directory by Social Fresh, and let us know how we can continue to grow it into a better resource.
How To Hide Your Facebook Profile
Update: Yes, this is a bit of an anti-social move. But it is what I needed to do to start getting more value out of Facebook personally. I am very open online and talk to people I have never met often, especially through Twitter. This is more about segmenting for me, and of course not for everybody.
More and more people are looking to make their Facebook experience more of a personal one. There is a lot of noise out there and Facebook can get pretty loud if you have not been very descerning about the friendships you have requested over the years (high school friends, coworkers, Farmville friends, etc).
If you have decided to start trimming your Facebook relationships, one of the next step possible steps is to limit who can add you as a friend in the first place.
I recently did this because most of the friend requests I get are for professional reasons. Most of these connections fall into three buckets: readers of my blog, people I meet at conferences, or people that hear me speak.
I want to keep my personal Facebook experience relevant but I also want to maintain these professional relationships since people were kind enough to show their interest. The solution that was right for me was to hide my personal profile in search and to establish a professional page for myself where people can stay in touch with my social media writing and speaking.
Going through this process, I found out that hiding your personal Facebook profile form Facebook search was not very easy. I have gone to the trouble for you, so here is a simple step by step for how to hide your Facebook profile:
1. Find Your Privacy Settings
Login in to Facebook.com and click on “Account” and then “Privacy Settings” in the top right
2. Find Your Connection Settings
Click on “View Settings” under ”Connecting on Facebook”.
3. Change Your Search Visibility
This top setting “Search for you on Facebook” is what will hide you in search results when other people try to find you. Set it to “Friends Only”.
It is importnat to note that “Your name, profile picture, gender and networks are visible to everyone”. So if someone does find your profile they will still see you are on Facebook. Additional settings on this page will allow you to control who can message you and request to add you as a friend.
You can leave your profile a little open so friends of friends can still message you and add you as a friend.
4. A Professional Page Option
Make sure when you name your professional fan page that you use your real name. Use your first and last name or whatever name people will mostly likely search for when trying to find you on Facebook.
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Image Source: Shutterstock.com
Justin Bieber Gives The Late Show 10,000 Twitter Followers With 2 Tweets
What do these numbers really mean? I have no clue. But David Letterman’s @Late_Show Twitter account got quite a large bump, from 40,000 to 50,000 followers, from the Twitter and pop star, Justin Bieber (@JustinBieber).
Bieber appeared on the Late Show Monday night, January 31st. Bieber’s tweets went out earlier in the day when the show tapes. And he was tweeting even more about the Late Show as the episode aired. Bieber has almost 7 million followers on Twitter. So that 10k is roughly .1% of his audience.
So all you have to do to get 10,000 Twitter followers in a day is… Nevermind. There is no real lesson here. It’s just pretty cool.
Explaining The Social Media Consultant Onslaught
People love to bitch about there being an overabundance of social media consultants our there on the internet.
5 Reasons People Bitch About The Abundance Of Social Media Consultants
- They think they are opportunists just out for quick money
- They think they are talentless
- They think they have no experience
- They think they are annoying (pushy/egocentric)
- They think they make the industry look silly
They are probably right. Well, mostly. Obviously we are not talking about Jason Falls, Tom Martin, Amber Mac, Jay Baer, Clay Hebert, and Paul Gillin. They do quality high level engagement stuff. Check them out.
But here is the thing.
Most of these “consultants” are never doing social media consulting.
How do I know? Because once upon a time… wait for it… I was a social media consultant.
Ok, are you done with all the dirty looks? Good. Moving forward.
So if they are not doing social media consulting then why do all these folks call themselves consultants and what are they really doing?
The term is ubiquitous because it makes sense. Most of the people in this category want to be able to get paid to help businesses with social media. The term is the simplest expression of that task.
The problem that becomes an immovable brick wall that many “consultants” run into — is that most companies do not want to pay for consulting. They do not want high level strategy or long term planning. They want to get their feet wet not swim the channel.
What ARE they ready for?
2 Things Companies Likely Want To Hire A Social Media Consultant For
- Intro Training
- Community Management
Basically you can translate those two things into “teach me about it” and “do it for me”. Where as most real consultants are instead providing long term research, strategy, guidance, and management of implementation. Most “consultants” are more often teaching companies about the tactics and culture of social medi or actually tweeting, Facebooking, and blogging on their behalf.
This makes sense considering how much of an education gap there is out there between social media talents and companies jumping into social media.
There is nothing wrong with this. If you have a passion for social media and time to commit. Why would you mind someone paying you to tweet on their behalf or to come in once a month and teach them a thing or two about this new space. This is both a good opportunity for both parties AND good experience to ultimately work your way up toward more substantive social media consulting.
When I decided to do social media consulting, I was escaping form the world of advertising and had some strategy background. However, most of my first few clients all wanted training and community management. If I had the time, I took those opportunities. And they helped me greatly.
So how can we improve the mood around the discussion of social media consultants?
Simple 3 Step Resolution To Hostilities
- Encourage more correct labeling, such as “I do introductory social media training and Twitter management”
- Realize that this is a big beautiful open ocean of an industry and that growing pains are inevitable. In other words, try not to bitch too much about it and let the industry evolve.
- Encourage and promote those consultants, trainers, and independent community managers who are doing things the right way.
Image Credit: Shutterstock.com
You Can Now Edit Your Friends’ Interests On Facebook
My buddy Clay Hebert (http://twitter.com/clayhebert) just added Tennis to “Sport I Play” on my Facebook profile. Yes, you read that right. You can now (depending on privacy settings) add interests to your friends profiles (similar to how you can check them in to Facebook Places).
Clay was right. I do play Tennis. So I do not mind, but there will be some abuse here. However, it really opens up your Facebook profile. Your friends can now help define you or describe you in a big way. I can see people loving this, but more than likely most will hate the fact that it is opt out.
Update [12/5/10 18:50 EST]: In trying to replicate this it appears it only currently applies to sports. But this is clearly now a trend by Facebook of opening up your profile and activity to input from your social graph.
Update [12/5/10 19:30 EST]: If you want to try this out. Go to edit your new profile, add a sport, and Facebook will give you an option to add who you play the sport with.
