The first issue is that SocialMedia has (sort of) been successful where Yahoo repeatedly failed.  Yahoo 360, Yahoo Mash, Yahoo Kickstart – make some sort of poll comparing these to Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, and you won’t be able to classify them as anything other than unknowns.

The second issue – and again, no offense – is that SocialMedia is a bit silly.  The company is best known for the Facebook application FoodFight, which allows users to toss virtual versions of things like lobsters and poo.

Ah, well.  In a statement, Frankel said, "Over the years I’ve worked with both advertisers and publishers, and am eager to bring that experience to SocialMedia Networks.  Consumers have an explosive new interest in social content and applications, generating unprecedented depth of attention and focus.  In this medium SocialMedia Networks has a unique opportunity to create a new consumer engagement paradigm for advertisers."

Sounds like both Frankel and SocialMedia know what they’re doing, regardless of how odd the apps are.

After all, that surely would have been a sign of insanity and a bubble.  Perhaps the apocalypse, as well.  Instead, reasonable firms and people such as Charles River Ventures, Marc Andreessen, and Jeff Clavier contributed to the investment, and their interest was presumably due to advertising potential.

“Using the marketplace offered by SocialMedia . . . less popular Facebook applications bid to get ads placed on the pages of more popular Facebook application – thus, increasing their traffic,” reports Eric Eldon.  To back up this ability SocialMedia offers an analytics engine called Appsaholic.

FoodFight may have played a small role in the round of financing, then, but so did Happy Hour, a more civilized drink-exchanging app.  And an official statement on the matter didn’t mention either of them until an “About Us” section.  Onlookers may still argue about the worth of Facebook and everything connected to it, but things aren’t as crazy as they might be.

Here’s the situation: you want to starting folding social media strategies, tactics and tools into your company’s PR program, but you’re not sure how exactly you want to approach things and because of that, you’re leaning toward bringing in some outside help. Maybe you’re thinking about a consultant or a small group of specialists or even a large services firm, the tough question is this:

How do you pick a good partner?

I think the market has reached a point now where it’s fairly easy to find knowledgeable people and more often than not, initial talks and meetings can give you surface-level insight into someone’s experience and know how. Often, if the price is right too, well, for some folks that’s enough. Decision made.

But let’s say you’re the crazy type that wants to get past surface-level questions and responses, and really dig into someone’s skill set – to ensure that they can really be the trusted adviser that you and your company are seeking. In this case, what sort of questions do you ask? And more important, what sort of responses should you expect?

Here are just a few questions, in no particular order, that you might want to consider:

How are they using new media in their business? It’s a fairly straight-forward question, right. Is the company or the consultant you’re talking to eating their own dog food? What you want to hear is of course yes, but I think what you also want to see is a degree of variety in how they’re active across the web. Having a personal blog, for example, is great, but at this point in the game, it’s practically a must-have. How else are they immersed?

How are they using new media with their clients? Again, a simple question, but the thing to zero in on is diversification. Are you seeing the replication of essentially the same project (e.g., a blog) or are you seeing a variety of projects? IMO, the broader spectrum of projects you see, the better. You want a partner that can advise you on the best strategies, tactics and tools, not just the ones they’ve done before. And remember, it doesn’t have to be a public-facing thing, some of the best usage of new media happens behind the firewall.

Have they ever worked through an online crisis? Yeah, a crisis is a crisis, whether it be online or not, I know, the point here is that the web can amplify and socialize news quickly, and you need to know your partner has experience dealing with this sort of thing. They don’t have to be crisis management experts, per se, but knowing how they’ve navigated these situations in the past is very helpful. If their response sounds something like blah, blah, blah, Kryptonite Locks, blah, blah, blah, Dell Hell, well then, that’s only an indication that they know what an online crisis is, not exactly how they handled one….

Who will do the work and what is their experience? This is more specific to service firms. It’s the bait and switch BS you’ve seen in the business, sadly, for years now. It’s great to have the internet sage present in the meetings quoting cluetrain and flaunting his in-depth understanding of A-lister eating habits, but here’s the thing: the success of most of these programs does not rest on this guy, it rests on those behind him, the ones who will likely do all the edgework. I mean, unless you’re cool spending $200/hour for this dude to do Technorati searches. Make an effort to meet all the people who will be on your team and make sure you’re comfortable and confident with their background and experience too.

Are they leading or following the industry? This is a tricky one, but essentially this question is about trying to determine how much authority and credibility your partner has within the industry. What you want to see, I believe, is a healthy mix of external sources that are supporting and justifying new ideas and new thinking that’s originating from your partner. Oh yeah, and you want your partner to be able to point you to things that they’re doing that substantiates all this. It’s tricky because some of the smartest consultants and firms out there have made some mistakes, some of them pretty messy, but the good stuff will usually outweigh the bad if you just take the time to look.

There are of course many other questions to ask, measurement comes to mind as one, training and education capabilities is another, but hopefully this provides you with a reference point for ways to dig a little deeper. Good luck.

Comments

Social media are the new vehicles on the Internet that allow humans to interact with each other. They’re proliferating at an incredible rate. It can be as simple as a commenting system on a blog or voting on videos on YouTube. Most humans are sociable creatures and enjoy such interactions. Not surprisingly social media are becoming more and more popular.

It’s all very human and the normal rules of human behaviour apply. Regrettably people are often drawn to check out an accident or a fire. In the same way, bad news travels much faster than good news.

If proof were needed, a small case in the last two days illustrates the strength of this factor. Lee Odden of TopRankBlog ran a poll on the Best Forums for Search Marketing Tips. The blog post would undoubtedly have drawn a certain amount of traffic. However inadvertently Lee omitted from the poll one of the more popular forums, Cre8asite Forums (of which I am a moderator).

The Cre8asite Fourms have their own special character. When Forum members heard of the omission, they headed across in droves to add their comments and show their support for Cre8asite Forums. Undoubtedly the blog post has seen much more traffic than it otherwise would have seed.

Both the Blog and Cre8asite Forums have probably benefited significantly from this glitch. Lee has acknowledged that he had inadvertently omitted Cre8asite Forums from the list. It clearly was not intended as link-bait. Yet the final result is that it is more successful than it otherwise would have been.

[For those interested, at the time of writing Cre8asite Forums with 25 write-in votes in the Comments almost pipped the front runner in the poll, High Rankings Forum, which has 27 votes.]

It almost makes you wonder whether it is better to include some intriguing mistakes in blog posts rather than seeking perfection. That would be a distressing moral to draw from such incidents.

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