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Powerfully simple. Simply powerful.

That’s it? That’s all we get? I checked the blogs and even called Webtrends VP, Jascha, to find out the scoop on the ominous message and date on the Webtrends site. I tried to squeeze some additional information out of the Webtrends social media guru, Justin.

No go. This is all we get:

I checked Twitter for #webtrends news: Matthew Bragg asked on Twitter:

CEO Alex Yoder stood up at the April 2009 Engage Conference and set some lofty goals for his organization. The company has gone through an entire restructuring and has made the news on embracing and integrating social media, and providing free access for customers to their data via the API.

Webtrends continues to intrigue me more than any other player on the market. I’ve actually started utilizing Webtrends personally and am looking forward to August 4th to finding out what’s next!

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Jason Falls

Razorfish has published a pleasantly useful report on social media called, “The Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Report.” You can download the report on Razorfish’s website here. It’s well worth the read.

The company’s VP and Global Social Media Lead, Shiv Singh sent a number of marketing and social media bloggers advanced copies of it last weekend in hopes we would write about it. I normally have little time to read reports or books, but most things coming out of Razorfish are pretty good and Singh has a stellar reputation, so I gave it a look see.

The report does something a lot of social media bloggers, thinkers and talkers don’t do. It whittles the focus down to a specific: Influence marketing or leveraging social connections with online influencers to market your product or services. Their analysis includes a survey of social influence which touches on the role of social media in buying decisions, how social media is becoming a place for paid and unpaid marketing efforts and talk of Facebook Connect an the resulting movement of the social graph.

More interestingly to me, though, is that Razorfish reveals in this report a new influence metric call the SIM Score, or social influence marketing measure. The score has two attributes the report calls, “critical.” First is the total share of consumer conversations the brand in question has online. The other is the degree to which customers like or dislike your brand when they talk about it online, or a sentiment score.

According to the report, “The first attribute … is a measure of reach. The second a measure of likability. The SIM Score combines the two attributes to essentially measure favorable impact of your brand.”

Essentially, the SIM score takes the net sentiment score for the brand and divides it by the net sentiment score for the industry, giving us a number. Comparing it to competitors would be relevant. I’d be interested to see other ways they might recommending using it.

There are lots of great insights to be pulled from this report. The best way for you to grasp them is to go and download it for yourself. It can be found online at http://fluent.razorfish.com/publication/?m=6540&l=1.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it, good or bad, in the comments. And a nice tip of the hat to Singh and the Razorfish crew for producing some relevant content to support their brand.

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• Only 33% of Us Trust Our “Online” Friends; Barely More Than Trust in Banner Ads! (marketingpilgrim.com)
• The Agency Side of Business: Shiv Singh, Razorfish (conversationagent.com)
• Fluent: The Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Report (socialmediatoday.com)
• Who Are You Targeting on Social Media? (kylelacy.com)

Yet again today I was invited to a handful of events – in person and via webinar – to gain exposure to a social media expert and their take on social media marketing. As I review their profiles, their LinkedIn info, their sites and their blogs, I find no substantial information supporting the premise that they are social media experts.

Social media expert? Really? Perhaps they have tens of thousands of Twitter followers, hundreds of comments on their Facebook wall, and membership in a dozen or so networks. Perhaps because they’re a charlatan, a shark or a geek.

What would I classify as a social media expert? I love Peter Shankman’s list of qualifications and disqualifications for social media experts. I would add – that if it’s pertaining to business – I would like to see a long list of measurable results and references across a variety of companies and strategies.

Do I classify myself as an expert? I do – but not because I claim to understand it all. This is a young medium and its changing on a daily basis. It’s changing business behavior. It’s changing consumer behavior. My decade of experience evolving from direct marketing and database marketing, email marketing, etc. enabled me to naturally evolve into my current status.

I don’t claim myself an expert because of my knowledge of social media… I claim myself an expert because of the work I’ve accomplished for companies large and small to grow their business, retain and upsell customers, and reduce customer service calls by effectively utilizing social media.

Do I claim myself an expert because of the work I currently do?

• I’m a VP of a blogging platform I helped dream up that’s doubling its business each year.
• I own an up and coming New Media Agency (excuse the mess, we’re REALLY young) with a couple heavy international clients.
• The integration and automation tools I’ve developed in the blogging, email, video and mobile space.
• The 2 social networks I helped start and continue to help run.
• My own blog which spans 4 years (plus a couple more on other platforms) speaking to social media and marketing technology.

NO! None of this qualifies me as an expert.

I call myself an expert for three reasons:

1. Businesses seek experts, not gurus and geeks.
2. Calling myself an expert holds myself to a higher standard and expectation with a company that I must fulfill.
3. I fit the definition:

An expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by their peers or the public in a specific well distinguished domain. An expert, more generally, is a person with extensive knowledge or ability in a particular area of study.

Am I smarter than the rest of the folks out there? Nope.
Do I know everything about social media? Of course not.
Do other experts always agree with me? Not a chance!
Has all of my work been successful? No – but much of it has.

I do believe that I have had an outstanding knack for analyzing business processes, marketing mediums, and determining how technology can bridge the gap. I don’t lie to clients and tell them they must be a part of social media if they wish to survive. I do share with them many of the successes, though! It’s a medium I personally believe in and hope to see mass adoption of – not because it can be manipulated by bad businesses – but because it can be leveraged by great businesses.

I believe social media connects businesses to prospects, builds improved relationships between customers and companies, pushes companies to improve customer service, builds transparency, and encourages thought leadership, entrepreneurial talent and evolution… all great for business.

And that, my friends, is my expert opinion.

PS: I’m sure if you go back far enough in my blog or comments on other blogs that I’ve torn into a few folks who self-proclaimed their expertise. Now it’s your turn.

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