A full transcript of the chat is available here. Thanks so much to Robyn and Cliqset for having us!

In just about every industry, specialty or niche there are generally four types of people: outsiders who know nothing, dabblers who have some knowledge, experts who know a lot, and savants whose knowledge and reputation are nothing less than extraordinary.

Social media seems to buck the trend though. The social realm has its share of true savants with names like Chris Brogan, Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble, Scott Allen and others highlighting the pantheon of superstars. There are plenty of people who don’t know anything — and who will happily admit it. But there are a LOT more “experts” than dabblers. Don’t believe me? A Google search on the subject of “social media expert” will yield over 81 MILLION results.

How did we get so many experts? The short answer is that we don’t actually have a disproportionate number of experts; we have a disproportionate number of dabblers who are confusing practical/tactical knowledge of a subject with strategic expertise. As my colleague Stephanie Frost and I have both said on numerous occasions, social media is, above all else, a communications tool and claiming expertise in social media would be like calling yourself an expert at using a fax machine. It’s nonsense.

A couple of weeks ago I was having a discussion with a couple of other bloggers (who will remain safely anonymous). We were chatting about some recent social media-related conferences and seminars around town and bemoaning that so little good information was exchanged. We wondered if perhaps the social media community was missing a “middle class” — that group of people that know enough to use the tools effectively but little enough that they would still gain benefit from attending a social media conference.

In my opinion, YES, there is a middle class in social media… And virtually all of us are in it. Somehow though, in this Gatsby-like alternate universe we’ve created, people are compelled to artificially elevate themselves into high society; possibly for ego, possibly for financial gain or maybe for both. But what may be most shocking is that the rest of us support this by paying cash money to attend workshops and conferences led by self-proclaimed experts who don’t have a thing to teach us.

I am NOT a social media expert. I am a marketer who has used social media to build my brand and  make valuable connections. In Marketing: Unmasked, the book that Stephanie and I coauthored, the chapter that deals with social media is a high-level overview, meant for novices and outsiders and seeks to explain how social media fits into an overall marketing plan — it’s not a “how to” or a get rich quick scheme designed to make you the next online superstar.

In fact, the only thing that may be more remarkable about my social media resumé than yours is the fact that my weekly radio program has given me personal access to a few of the true experts, savants and thought leaders out there. And, by the way, I won’t call myself expert by association either.

So this is a plea to my colleagues in the Blogosphere, Twitterverse and other imaginary places of which I am apparently a citizen: please remove the words “social media expert” from your bio, profile, business card, t-shirt, etc. If it’s tattooed on your back, start saving for the laser surgery. And if you’re invited to speak on a topic for which you can not offer any real insight, please decline the invitation. Let’s return some semblance of dignity to this medium that we all enjoy using so much.

Yes, social media is revolutionary — yes, it is in fact social media and not email that has grown up to be the “killer app” on the Internet — and yes, we have all gained profit and notoriety by using it well. But let’s give some careful thought before we start throwing the “E” word around… This is all still very new and we are all students of social media. Do we all have to be the teachers too?

We were talking to David Meerman Scott — author of World Wide Rave — on our radio show this morning and he has an unusual perspective on distributing content online. When offering an ebook or a white paper, most marketers would tell you to offer your content in exchange for an email address or other personal information. The rationale is, of course, that a business owner should be able to A) determine who is downloading their valuable content and B) have the ability to follow up with that individual afterward.

Scott didn’t think so. In his experience, he claimed that allowing site visitors to download the paper without providing any personal information would increase the interest and readership of the content several times over.

So what’s more valuable? The information you get from the people who download your content online or the much larger readership that you may be missing out on because you are asking for information?

We’ve decided to make ourselves guinea pigs in this experiment. For the first time, our white papers are available with no strings or required information to provide. You can find them here:

• 8 Common Small Business Web Design Pitfalls (+ how to avoid them!)
• 10 Steps Towards an Effective Small Business Marketing Plan
• What to Look for When You’re Hiring a Design Firm

For the next few months we’ll be openly reporting on how these papers do in terms of any increase in downloads and whether or not we see our online leads diminish as a result of this. Stay tuned, this should be interesting!

Earlier this week Marketing Sherpa published an alarming statistic. It seems that 2/3 of marketers working in organizations that “have not used any form of social media marketing or PR” self-identify as experts in social media. How is this possible? Are they learning by osmosis? Do they have friends that use social media? Or perhaps they’ve just been reading and watching the increasingly frequent news reports about social media.

You know, I watched Bobby Flay make a choclate souffle on Iron Chef last week but I couldn’t do it myself… And I certainly haven’t watched enough New Yankee Workshop to start making my own furniture.

It’s obvious what’s happening here — Sherpa drew the same conclusion — companies and organizations are feeling pressured to dive into the Social Mediasphere and tapping the person in their group that has the most friends on Facebook or maybe a semi-complete LinkedIn profile to become their social media maven. That’s cool and it’s only natural that firms try to develop these initiatives internally. But that the person ordained with this role should automatically consider themselves an expert is just ludicrous.

Anyone who has spent a decent amount of time traveling in social media circles realizes very quickly that they are surrounded by an astounding number of self-proclaimed “experts.” They are everywhere and it’s sometimes difficult, especially at first, to distinguish between the people who have genuine insight and those that are just blowing smoke.

Want to know how to become an expert? USE the tools. Use them extensively for a period of months and figure out what works for you and how you can become successful — or not — using online networking.

After all, the social media community doesn’t need another self-proclaimed expert… It needs people who are actually willing to contribute to the conversation in an open, meaningful and HONEST way.

And why should you listen to me? Well, at least I use the stuff. According to TweetWasters, I have spent nearly a day of my life writing tweets so far… But I’m no expert. There aren’t many who really are.

Late last week, blogger supreme Chris Brogan (I wonder if he still manifests himself physically or if he’s found a way to fully upload his consciousness to the ‘net) gave us a peak inside his “system” for keeping up with everything social media.

Now I’m not nearly as prolific (or relevant) as Chris or Guy Kawasaki or Duct Tape’s John Jantsch who also blogged his system; I’m just your average small business owner and I make it a priority to participate in social media at a fairly high level because I find it an invaluable networking tool and a vibrant, active community where valuable information, news and advice is being shared constantly. It also gives me the opportunity to create and easily distribute content that is valuable to my clients as well as other entrepreneurs and small business owners. But here’s the thing: it is a big time investment and one that a lot of folks are unwilling to make. Here’s how I do it:

The blog:

I love blogging but I can’t do it twice a day like Brogan. Wish I could though. I try to blog twice a week. They don’t have to be long posts, my only requirement is that they be relevant and useful to someone other than myself. Every now and then I’ll pre-blog a couple of posts if I’m on a good tear and save them for later in the week, but most of the time I do it live. Most of my good writing gets done first thing in the morning before the kids get up. I’ve also been helped much by Stephanie’s contributions, she’s been writing once a week. If anyone wants to be a guest blogger, let me know!

The radio show:

This is new, but it’s been a serious time commitment already and I’m trying to work it into my routine. Every Tuesday at 10AM we’ll be on the air. We also need to book guests, do our prep work and post the weekly podcast. I have a feeling most of the “work” on this (save the booking of guests) will be done over the weekends.

Twitter:

Twitter is really the glue that holds it all together for me. Without Twitter, I would feel completely out of touch. First thing every morning, I answer all my “twitter mail,” responding to messages and sending messages to new followers. Tweetdeck keeps me connected to all the twittery-goodness I need when I’m in front of my computer and I make an effort to read up on what people are talking about several times a day.

I tweet whenever feels natural, whenever I’ve heard something interesting, am working on something interesting, want to respond to something interesting or sometimes just because I feel like sharing which is OK too This has become so much a part of my regular routine that I barely even notice it any more. In fact, I just pulled up my tweetstats and it appears that I tweeted almost 20 times a day on average in January. Sounds like a lot, but really, it didn’t impact my day or take me away from anything important. Tweetdeck makes it easy as does Twitterberry, my blackberry interface.

The most valuable thing for me about Twitter is that it keeps me connected with the world out there when I’m not blogging or otherwise communicating with the rest of the world. It’s like the meat in my social media sandwich.

The other stuff:

I love LinkedIn and I am trying to make it a point of using it more proactively. I’ve found that when you combine LinkedIn with Twitter good things happen and you can make fantastic connections between the two networks. Even without focusing on LinkedIn, I usually check in about once a day just to see what people are up to.

I’m also on Facebook, but it’s definitely a low priority. I usually go in there about once a week and otherwise just respond to friend requests and other messages/comments that people leave for me.

All in all, social media represents a few solid hours a week of proactive time investment. If anyone else out there has any helpful tips on using social media, please feel free to contribute!

Yesterday will certainly be remembered as Barack Obama’s day but something else changed as well… Marketers, tech junkies and newshounds will also remember yesterday as the day that social media — the real-time interaction, participation and sharing between people via online tools — truly came of age and took on a profound new relevance.

If you ask me where I was at the moment President Obama was inaugurated, I might tell you I was at my desk in my office just like always. But more likely, I’d say I was on Twitter. Keith and I watched the proceedings live via streaming video online. And while it was going on, we were both watching the simultaneous commentary on Twitter as people shared their feelings, emotions and discussed the most minute details of the proceedings. We contributed as well, typing our thoughts as the new President delivered his inaugural address.

But what’s most remarkable is that our experience connected us in a very tangible way with millions of others around the country and the world. People watching from their homes, offices or in coffee shops, people in the mall in Washington and people from across the ocean. People posted their takes on the speech, their hopes for America and their photos and videos throughout the day. If you search for “obama inauguration” on Flickr, you will get more then 43,000 results. On YouTube you’d find 34,000+.

Another remarkable thing to take note of was how the “legit” news media leveraged the online chatter in their coverage. It seems appropriate that yesterday would mark a new high-water-mark in the usage of social media by the press since those tools played such a huge role in getting Obama elected in the first place. Social media was actually integrated almost seamlessly into yesterday’s coverage. CNN’s video stream featured a live feed from Facebook, featuring users’ status updates as the inauguration happened.

CNN also gets kudos for compiling this 3D photo montage of “the moment” Obama was inaugurated — from thousands of photos, mostly user-submitted. The power of that image is magnified when you realize that this implementation of social networking has changed the very definition of photography, i.e., one photographer, one lens, one experience. “The moment” allows us to experience the inaguration through the crowd’s collective “lens.”

Another significant event in the history of social media that occurred just after the inauguration was the launch of the new WhiteHouse.Gov, which demonstrates President Obama’s continued commitment to social media. The site includes a blog and you can also follow the White House on Twitter, a tool Obama used throughout the campaign.

I think it’s safe to say that as of yesterday, the so-called “information age” has truly evolved into something new and incredible.

Photo by Alex Barth

I just couldn’t resist writing this, especially since so many people have been asking me about being on “the Twitter” and how it works, how I use it and what I hope to gain by being there. So I’ve compiled the top six lessons I’ve learned over six months of sharing my thoughts in 140 characters or less.

1. I’m HUGE on Twitter

OK, well… Not really. As of this writing I have posted to Twitter about 1,000 times, averaging out to about 6.2 tweets a day (though considerably more over the past couple of months as my addiction has deepened). And in that time, I have amassed 540 “followers” or readers. Twitter Grader gives me a score of 98.2 out of 100 and, among all Twitter users, ranks me in the top 15… thousand.

So no, I’m not an Internet celebrity but Twitter does increase my influence and gives me direct access to brilliant people and subject matter experts who teach me a lot. And the same goes for the people who follow me. With the exception of the REAL celebrities on Twitter like Shaquille O’Neal and MC Hammer, your “fame” is directly correlated with the quality of your content.

2. It’s not about what you’re “doing”

When you open up Twitter, the caption famously asks “What are you doing?” So without exception, every Twitter skeptic that I encounter in my travels asks “So why do people care what I’m doing right now?”

They don’t.

They care about what you’re INTERESTED in right now. They want to know what you’ve discovered today… What you’re reading, what you might have learned in a conversation over lunch, what you’re working on, what’s making you laugh, the epiphanies that you have throughout the day.

Sure, everyone posts mundane tidbits too, the “what are you doing?” stuff, but that’s not what makes Twitter great. Focusing your 140 characters on something that has captured your attention makes you instantly relevant and gives you a unique opportunity to not only share but also contribute positively to someone else’s day.

3. Everyone has time for Twitter

Seriously. We’re talking 140 characters at a time here. I tend to tweet between tasks or when my brain needs a quick reset. Sorta like a coffee break.

By the way, that teeny paragraph above is too long to be a Twitter update. You can do this, really. Consider this: we make time to have coffee with strangers that we meet at networking functions. Including drive time, you’re probably looking at a two hour investment give or take. And that’s just to exchange pleasantries with ONE person. Two hours spent on Twitter can expose you to THOUSANDS of people.

Now I didn’t just say to abandon traditional networking. Don’t do that; networking with real, non-digital people is still very important. But you should view Twitter as a networking opportunity and give it the same attention you’d give an offline networking venue.

4. You’ve got to give in order to receive

Yes, much like traditional networking, you can’t walk into a room full of people, shove a business card into every hand in the room and then walk out expecting to get business even though you didn’t stop to listen to what anyone else had to say. Likewise, you cant toss a handful of pithy remarks up on Twitter and expect to have 3,000 followers overnight.

If you want people to follow you and read your updates, you need to read other people’s stuff. It shouldn’t be surprising that if you show an interest in someone else, they are more likely to show an interest in you. Yes, “digital” people are EXACTLY like their flesh-and-bone counterparts! The more you treat your online friends and associates like your offline ones, the better you will do.

And be fair… Don’t expect scores of followers until you’ve accumulated enough content to pique their interest. I usually read a page of updates or so before following someone. Makes it easier to weed out people who are basically Twitter spammers (trying to earn referral $ by pulling traffic onto a web site).

Which brings me to another point: if someone follows you, ALWAYS follow them back unless they fall into the spammer category. I even follow people back if they have views — whether political, religious or even baseball related — that are different than my own. By the way, if anyone is following me and I am NOT following them back, please send me a direct message and I’ll take care of that.

5. Get a Twitter client

So it turns out that the best places to tweet aren’t at Twitter.com. As nice as the site is, it’s just not capable of unlocking the highly addictive, constantly communicating goodness that Twitter has deep inside. The site is fine if you’re dabbling, but as you follow more, write more and get followed more it becomes harder and harder to keep track of everything on the Twitter web site. Managing tweets, replies, direct messages and keeping up with what others are saying is MUCH easier using a Twitter client. I’ve tried a bunch and my favorite is TweetDeck. It’s simple and intuitive and since it was built in Adobe Air, it works on Macs and PCs.

Honestly, I think a big part of why I’ve been tweeting more recently isn’t because I’m more into it, but because it’s so much EASIER with TweetDeck.

Additionally, if you have a smart phone, get a Twitter client for your phone too. I’ve got one called TwitterBerry for my Blackberry. It isn’t great for reading tweets (it’s a little slow, which I’d probably blame on my slow mobile web connection) but it makes writing on the go super easy.

6. Participate!

This goes without saying, but just as in any networking setting, you actually have to engage with people if you want them to remember you. If someone says something interesting, reply to it. If someone replies to you, reply back.

And if someone follows you, it is courteous to thank them with a direct message. Many people sign up for services that automatically send a “canned” direct message for you the second that someone follows. Don’t do that. It’s annoying and it wastes people’s time. And Chris Brogan will be mad. None of us want to see him mad.

Similarly, if someone follows you, don’t thank them in a public tweet, this also wastes people’s time. I’ve made a resolution to do this right going forward and send a personal direct message to everyone who follows. It’s too nice of an opportunity to connect with someone and maybe make yourself a little more memorable. Don’t be a Twitter wallflower!

So what does it all mean?

I don’t believe I’ve been very subtle in saying that I believe Twitter has tremendous utility as a business networking tool. But you need to treat it like a networking tool and show respect and courtesy to the the people you meet. Of all the social media tools I’ve used, Twitter has definitely been the most interesting and the most rewarding for me. Oh, and if you’re reading this, don’t forget to follow me

What would you risk for something you really believed in?

Emily Capps and I have been working together for nearly four years. She’s a fantastically talented copywriter and I’ve hired her many times. I’ve done work for her as well as she hired Zero-G to redo her web site back in 2007.

Over lunch a few months ago, she told me that she was working on a side project, a web site that was very important to her. Emily said that as a kid, she was bullied by her classmates to the point that she started hearing voices — and they didn’t stop for 14 years. Emily thought it was important to tell her story openly and honestly so she might help prevent someone else from having to go through what she went through.

But people she talked to were skeptical about her project, particularly from the point of view that it may negatively impact her business as a copywriter and creative consultant. After all, she would be publicly exposing her past issues with depression and auditory hallucinations to to the world — an audience that includes people she works with or potentially may work for. She was torn about it, especially since she felt that publishing under a pen name or using a web nickname or handle wouldn’t be fair to the audience she was trying to help. She didn’t want to seem ashamed of her past problems or give the impression that she was hiding from them. It wouldn’t send the right message.

In the end, Emily chose to do the courageous thing (which was, in some ways more courageous than writing the site in the first place). When her new site, Just One Pepsi, launched it did include her real name and even a photograph.

Funny but back in high school when I got my first AOL account (which was many years before we all realized how annoying AOL was), the fascinating and intriguing thing about it was that everyone was pretty much anonymous out there. You didn’t have to give anyone your real name, you could be whoever you wanted… But now our entire lives are online. Massive databases have been built for the sole purpose of figuring out where I went to high school and if that Erik Wolf is the same Erik Wolf who then attended college at Emory. Our entire lives are online and for better or worse, true anonymity is a difficult thing to come by online or anywhere else.

There’s an expectation now that if you visit a web site that there is going to be a real person behind it and that you can “get to know” that person through their work online. Emily knew that if she was going to be true to what she wanted to accomplish with the site that she would have to do the brave thing, take a risk and show visitors who she was.

And by the way, Emily remains a fantastically talented writer and her Just One Pepsi site is a testament to that. The site clearly displays her talent, passion and creativity and tells an incredible story.

The moral of all this? Besides the lessons of Emily’s struggles and ultimate perseverance, the lessons to everyone should be that if you are passionate about something — whether it’s a good cause, a business venture or just about anything in life — you may need to take a significant risk on its behalf. And if it’s not worth the risk, what’s the point anyway?

1. Stop worrying about the economy. From what I see working with business owners every day, unless you’re in real estate or somehow otherwise tied to the banking/housing crises, small businesses seem to be doing just fine. Keep a positive outlook and resolve NOT to participate in the recession. A down economy is a fantastic business opportunity to gain an advantage over competitiors who — unlike yourself — are feeling skiddish about the economy and are cutting spending, cutting marketing and basically going into “hibernation” mode until CNN says it’s over. Now is the time to put your best face forward.

2. Focus. Focus everything. Focus your offerings and marketing on products/services that reap the greatest profit. Focus your marketing/mailing lists and don’t be afraid to cut it down by 20 or 30% and reinvest the time and cash savings in hitting the remaining 80% harder. And don’t forget to schedule time with yourself every week to focus on your outbound sales and marketing efforts.

3. Out with the old. Make a list of every item in your sales or marketing toolkit that you haven’t overhauled in at least two years. And then start replacing them one by one. Make yourself a calendar and set deadlines to remind you when that old web site needs to be gone, when you’re going to work on replacing that circa 2006 trifold with something more relevant. This also goes back to my first resolution about turning the bad economy into an opportunity. A fresh look sends a strong implied message to your customers that you’re not only surviving but excelling. No one wants to do business with someone who looks like they’re circling the drain; your customers and prospects want to partner with firms that look strong and have that “smell of success” about them.

4. Do SOMETHING online. I’m assuming here that you already have an active email marketing strategy. If not, start on that immediately. But social media affords some fantastic opportunities to connect with and stay in front of clients, prospects, partners and vendors and you should be represented somewhere out there. There are many social media tools out there that are great for promoting business and business people (besides good old-fashioned traditional blogging) including LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Squidoo to name just a handful. But don’t go and jump head first into all this stuff… Pick one and stick with it (we all know you don’t have time to devote to updating several social media tools every day so be realistic; after all, no one is impressed with a stale profile that never seems to have anything new or interesting). And stick with it for a few months at least before giving up.

My social media drug of choice is Twitter (though I’m also active on LinkedIn). I’ve been on Twitter a few months now, and even though it’s a big commitment to keep it current, it’s a lot of fun and I have definitely connected with people who will be valuable in my business this year. Really, it’s the easiest and most painless networking I’ve ever done.

5. Do something green. I think it should be crystal clear by now that “green” is the new color of money. Yes, it’s also the old color of money, but you all know what I mean. Being environmentally friendly is not only responsible, it’s profitable. And environmentally-friendly practices can be implemented MUCH more quickly and easily within nimble, streamlined small businesses than in our big, clunky large enterprise counterparts. Now is a great time to claim a point of differentiation for your business that is both socially responsible and relevant to your customers.

6. Give something back. Charity may not be directly tied to sales and marketing benefits but so what? No business is too small to care about philanthropy and supporting their community. Doing the right thing is its own reward and tends to bring other unexpected benefits as well.

Happy New Year! Here’s a to a fantastic 2009!

Understanding what our customers and other stakeholders/constituents are looking for is a critical early step towards success on the web, there is no doubt about it.

If you don’t know where to start, try creating a “persona” or a profile of your average customer. List out their wants and needs, their pain points and reasons that they would — and would not — be inclined to do business with you. Then create a different persona for each type of target constituent that visits your web site.

For example, if I had a products company that made sporting goods, I would likely have a persona for an end consumer, one for a retail partner and potentially one for a school or private sports league if I sold through those channels. I may even want to create a media persona when outlining requirements for a news area or a job seeker for my careers section if those aspects of my business are key to my overall strategy.

Having these personas in my back pocket gives me an easy way to put myself in someone else’s shoes… If I’m a sales consultant and I’ve identified that my typical client is a busy CEO who is short on time and wants to see fast results, I probably don’t want to make her sit through a lengthy video or online presentation. But I might allow her to request a specific day and time for a free phone consultation or possibly email some high level content that she can read at her leisure.

And here’s another tip…  “10-20 employee company in a service industry” can NOT be a persona because it’s not a “person.” The office manager, CFO or President at that company is though. Don’t forget that only people can visit web sites; companies can not.

If you focus on addressing the wants and needs of your audience, it’s a lot harder to take a wrong turn.

Want tips 6 through 8? Download the entire paper here.