When I first started studying this channel, I probably would agree with you more than I do today around the single-mindedness and rationality-free enthusiasm about social media re-creating the world as we know it. I have definitely seen more humility and common-sense creeping into the country club blogs in the last 2-3 months. I believe a lot of that has come from the new voices coming on the scene adding a fresh dose of “hey, wait a minute here!”

Still, the group-think and cronyism presented by the top bloggers is disheartening to me when they actively try to stomp out dissent. Their perspective is often incredibly narrow and insulated and then it gets repeated through thousands of RT’s, drowning out fresh ideas.

I read this post a while back. Someone on my blog suggested it. I thought it was a good post, but had nothing to add. Now I do.

I recently wrote a post about Digital ROI. My point was that although the ROI issue seems to be raging in the Digital World, it is really not much of an issue anywhere else.

Digital remains a small (but important) part of the marketing world and most companies are far more concerned with overall ROI than ROI for any specific channel or promotional action.

Whoa!!! Those Social Media people can be touchy!

Besides some comments on the site (which weren’t the worst I’ve seen)they were really going strong on twitter.

What was interesting is how they mutually reinforce the idea that nobody understands them and encourage each other to evangelize.

They never really want to know what Social Media’s role is within the process, they just assume that Social Media is central and everybody will have to adapt to them.

You can see the post here: http://www.digitaltonto.com/2009/quest-for-digital-media-roi/

- Greg

Like you, my point isn’t to bash the experts. But rather to ask what gets lost when expertise is sold, rather than held out for inspection.

Your four points provide some good answers. Take humility, for example.

I engage on blogs, Twitter and Linkedin because in composing answers to ideas and queries often helps me reflect on my own basic assumptions and to challenge them. Responding keeps me from operating on autopilot. It helps me think, and do my job better.

However, once I start responding in order to raise my visibility and promote myself, I’m on dangerous ground. Not only am I failing to challenge my assumptions, but I’m less motivated to challenge yours.

My definition of an expert is someone knowledgeable enough to know which questions are intelligent enough to ask – not which answers are smart enough to sell.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Having just moved to this new Wordpress platform this week, I’m experiencing many technical problems, including a loss of email service. So I think I will let the thing stabilize for a week or so before trying anything new!

I think there are checks and balances in the SM community and we do tend to speak out, discuss and debate issues, as evidenced by the comments on your last post. To me the best behavior to adopt is the easiest, cheesiest, scariest of all: be yourself.

Regarding the anonymous feedback idea, and I am paraphrasing here, is justice served in secrecy justice? Right now people are comfortable hiding behind avatars and forum handles, free to write the most glowing or damning reviews on Amazon, Epinions, TripAdvisor, without revealing our secret identities. With Facebook connect stripping the mask away, will that change?

Thanks for holding up the mirror, making me take another look.

Second, I’m grateful that you seem to be taking the comments as the way they were meant, a personal reflection, not a “to-do” list.

One of the biggest frustrations with blogging is that people tend to scan and make an impression instead of reading carefully and getting the full picture. Most of my blogs are written with this in mind — people are busy, and I want to make things easy for them!

But this one really needs to be read carefully or it would totally be taken the wrong way. I knew I was taking a risk. Thanks for taking the time to read it and provide such thought-provoking insights. By the end of the day I think I will have quite a list of ideas to use moving forward.

There is a time for discussion and a time for action, and debating the course when already committed to battle is suicide.

As I have written here before, social media is still the undiscovered country. There are examples and anecdotes, but no long-term studies on effectiveness, nor even current research evaluating the strategies in place today.

The discussion is ongoing for many, but the battle is engaged for others (in particular, those who have created businesses to take advantage of social media tools.) Those in the battle don’t seem to want to discuss the strategy — hence, social media measurement tactics that simply stop at outputs and never get to outcomes.

You are as qualified as anyone to ask questions, offer opinions and engage others in discussion — that’s purportedly one important reason social media exists. I realize I seem quite academic in these spaces (perhaps revealing my aspirations, in general), so the comments and discussion from the trenches (sorry for all the military similes) are extremely valuable for me.

Don’t stop. And, don’t apologize. This is what this medium is for.

Sean
@commammo

Twitter, for example, creates false leaders — those with 40K followers and above. When they don’t respond to my questions, are they really influentials?

Lots of press lately on the ‘tudes we’re seeing as result of social media, economy, etc. Cruelty, lack of common courtesy, offensive gestures/behaviors and the like breed contempt for social media neighbors, too.

What fine line should leaders walk? Should politics, religion and other provoking topics be left in respective safe zones?

Bloggers are opinion shapers who deliver opportunity for pro/con and consensus. Regardless of how you define leadership, it’s a blogger’s obligation to provoke and instill an editorialized community (like the op-ed/editorial pages of print journalists).