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Over on twitter and a certain blog, there’s been much debate about a Thought Leader vs. a Practitioner. As the saying goes, “those that can’t DO, teach.”
The ideas and arguments are fine and dandy. Although I’m honestly more on the side of the Practitioners. But, here’s my rub:
People like Brogan and Fitton (aka @Pistachio) should NOT be the people in our industry we look up to. They can’t pinpoint a single thing they’ve done for a major company nor have they duplicated what they’ve done for themselves for a company. Yea, yea, they’re working for big companies like Pepsi and Sony, but that’s like saying, “I worked on BMW films.” Everyone and their sister has; even the guy with the gmail address. Show me the specific piece YOU did for the big company.
The REAL people we should be looking towards are people like Susan from Sharpie, Frank Eliason from Comcast and Paula Berg from Southwest. Names don’t ring a bell? Yea, that’s because they’re the people actually DOING. They’re the people with case studies. They’re the people that started programs from the ground up, are growing and expanding them and oh, yeah, their programs are working.
By all means, please continue to listen to the theories. Me? I’ll be watching what Susan, Frank and Paula are doing. I like taking my cues from them.
Um…might you be talking about Social Media Marketing…and not necessarily social media then?
Hard to define thought leaders when for the most part, we can’t even get the darned ‘social media’ term right.
For my money: social media is the process of building and managing online social communities. The practice of co-opting those communities for the purposes of marketing is social media marketing…
Are you saying that you’re voluntarily limiting your view to “following” just 3 thought leaders?
Agreed, 1 or 2 might be even more parochial, but 3 out of 6 or 7 billion people isn’t entirely eclectic either, now, is it?
;D nmw
@nmw no, just giving 3 alternate examples. It’s the same thing as people “voluntarily” always only mentioning Brogan or Fitton. Is that to say they’re the only ones to follow?
@Mark – Thanks for the comment. First, not once did I specifically use the word “social” in my post. But, since we’re defining terms, let’s get all the definitions straight…
Social Media, in the truest sense of the word (and defined by Wikipedia) is: Online content created by people. For an easier term, UGC (user generated content). Simple. No more, no less.
If you want to get technical, the term we should use when referencing the whole kit and kaboodle is Social Web. Again, defined by Wikipedia: How people socialize, connect and interact online. To make it simple, Social Network + Social Media = Social Web.
Social Media Marketing is the act of leveraging the Social Web for marketing, PR or customer relations purposes.
Great. Now we have our definitions. Now tell me how someone can be a Social Network or Social Media Thought Leader without utilizing the Marketing piece of the equation if we’re referring to the Marketing Industry (vs. let’s say tech people)?
Are you saying that Brogan is a Thought Leader in social media but not social media marketing? I’m a little fuzzy on your point…
IM not-so HO,
people don’t matter (see http://gaggle.info/post/179/what-is-web-30-part-1-people-are-meaningless for an inkling of what I’m talking about)
It really shouldn’t matter so much WHO says something — what should matter is whether whatever is said is right/wrong, true/false, relevant/irrelevant, etc.
And what matters there are not the people who say it, but rather whether what’s said (the “content”) is appropriate to the contexts in which it’s being said (see http://gaggle.info/post/180/what-is-web-30-part-2-context-is-queen 😉
And so what’s a-twitter in a commercial context will be happening at twitter.com, and what’s “commercial news” will show up at news.com (and so on).
There are also examples of brands becoming part of a community’s language (such as kleenex in the US, tempo in Germany, etc.), but those are actually quite rare (and in fact, the companies that have such “viral” brands constantly have a difficult time of protecting their IP).
What matters in social media, however, is not preventing people from engaging, but rather in GETTING them to engage — and that is easiest to do when you speak the same language as the people you’d like to interact with… otherwise there’s what’s known as a “language barrier” (and whether that language barrier is jargon or dialect or whatever doesn’t really matter: they’re all BARRIERS, and barriers SUCK ;).
So my whole point is: Forget the individuals, the so-called “leaders”! Instead, focus more on speaking the languages of the communities you’d like to engage with!
You tagged it social media, so I assumed that was what you meant. If we were talking truck repair, my bad… 😉
My point is that we can’t even seem to get the terms straight, so how do we drop into the minutia of who is and isn’t a thought leader.
Otherwise, we’re pretty much on the same page. I hate the notion of the a-lister or even the micro-celebrity.
Personally, I think what’s missing from the discussion is this: before one can be a teacher, one needs to first be a student. In online communities, I see a greatly accelerated progression from newbie to expert. That’s going back a long ways, to the dark old BBS days. It hasn’t changed…and I don’t think it ever will. That’s why this whole question could even come up to begin with.
The days of the “idea guy” are done. Simply being a thinker and not an implementer isn’t working anymore. Or at least I like to think so.
@Mark aha, gotcha. I think we’re on the same page / saying similar things. @adamkmiec would heart you… he finds it ironic (as do I) that people have gone form “newbie” to “expert” very quickly. Well under Gladwell’s proposed 10,000 hour expert theory.
I also totally agree about the thinker vs. the implementer…. I’m a huge believer in making things work operationally: http://www.fieryirishrose.com/2009/06/thinking-operationally/
Right on! In a similar vein my thoughts from a few months ago…
http://www.allthingscahill.com/2009/02/manifesto-for-social-media-stop-talking-start-doing/
@nmw I think that goes along with my follow up post: http://www.fieryirishrose.com/2009/07/you-pick-thought-leader-vs-practitioner/
[…] cow! Clearly Thought Leader vs. Practitioner was quite the burning topic. But, it also seems like people are getting bogged down in names and favorites. You have your […]