Social Media: Vladimir And The Dancing Poodles

With Social Media being one of the fastest growing specialties in business, (a Google search for “social media experts” returns 9.4 million results), why are so few employed? Why are there so many self-proclaimed social media experts looking for their first consulting engagement?  Should not the corporate world be beating a path to their doors?  Should not the social media gurus be on the evening news, or at least featured on Neil Cavuto’s Fox Business Report?

Not necessarily, and the reason can be explained by this cartoon about Vladimir and the Dancing Poodles.

The dancing poodles in most circuses are one of the marque performers.   “Oh Dad,” we can all remember our children screaming between mouths full of popcorn, “they are so cute!”  And so they are.  But ultimately, the longevity of their circus act depends upon a series of important required events:  Vladimir must be able to communicate successfully with the poodles, new visitors must come to the circus, buy tickets, tell their friends, and the circus owner must be able to see the difference at the gate.  If all of these events occur, the circus stays open and all the performers keep their jobs.  If not, the reluctant Ringmaster cuts back from three rings to two, and Vladimir follows the Dancing Poodles out of the tent.

Inside many corporations, Vladimir is the accounting department and the Dancing Poodles reside in marketing and sales.  The poodles insist that “Social Media will revolutionize the business”, and Vladimir’s position is “Show me.”  Not even the Ringmaster can solve the problem when visitors are not buying tickets, and even if they are, if there is no way to prove that the Dancing Poodles are responsible for the ticket sales the result is the same.  If there was a predictable way to accurately measure results after the fact, or anticipate results before the fact, all might be well under the Big Top.  But there isn’t.  Or hasn’t been.

In a nutshell, that is the reason most Social Media experts are languishing.

THE SOCIAL MEDIA METRIC: A PUZZLE THAT NEEDS TO BE SOLVED

Traditional industries of all types are suffering during this recession.  Professionals, in particular, are finding themselves unemployed.  Even otherwise successful marketing, sales and accounting departments, normally as resistant to downsizing as Teflon is to burned-on scrambled eggs, will not survive if corporate profitability is not demonstrably improved.

Social Media is an exciting path to profits, and if a reliable Social Media Metric can be devised to quantify and give credit to Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook for the result, the puzzle can and will be solved.

As a Senior Officer at AIG for many years, having survived innumerable contests with accounting departments to prove our company’s value, I have learned the importance of formula-based financial viability. So it should be no surprise that discovering a suitable metric for Social Media is one of our top business priorities, as it is with the thirty or so real experts around the blogosphere (notably Jim Sterne and Olivier Blanchard, among others).

Social Media may be a circus, but if so, you might watch the Center Ring and the Midway for the “newest attraction”, under the banner proclaiming … “Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, buy your ticket and see the amazing Social Media Metric.”

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