February 2, 2012 by Robert Kozinets.

In January I started my MBA class in social media marketing and management at the Schulich School of Business and it really feels great to be teaching again. If you’re interested in the class, you can join our open to the public Facebook page, which is simply titled Social Media Marketing.

In today’s class we had an interesting discussion about positioning your personal brand. Of course, because it’s a social media marketing class filled with aspiring marketers, a number of people in the class were considering positioning themselves as social media experts (no, I don’t mean social media”gurus”, eek). So whatever the category they were interested in, whether it was a category manager, a brand manager, sales manager, advertising account manager, or even a financial professional, they were thinking about using “social media savvy” something like that as their point of difference that help them to stand out from the crowd in a way that would help them to be noticed and found relevant.

As we were discussing this topical an important point difference in class, it dawned on me that social media marketer as a descriptive term is becoming increasingly less unique and therefore less meaningful.

Gather round, children, for a tale from the origins of Web Age.

You see, when I began researching in this area, I was known as “an Internet guy.” Then I was a “virtual community guy.” And then “online community guy.” Then I was a blogging guy. And all the time, I guess I was a netnography guy. In the last few years, I’ve obviously been a social media guy.

And I guess that’s at the crux of my problem with all this. Because in the example that I gave to the class, I positioned myself as a social media marketing professor, and my point of difference was social media marketing expertise. However, when I think about it, that’s now a much more crowded space than it was a decade ago. And it’s getting more crowded all the time.

I think we are already at the stage, then, where social media and social media marketing are fragmenting into various specialties and subspecialties. First you could be an Internet person, then a Web person, a browser person, a new media person, a social media person, and so on.What will be the next phase of social media? Being a web analytics person. A community management person? A brand community designer? And online research community specialist. A co-creation and User-Generated Media specialist. A PR response person. A transmedia brand narrative storytelling specialist.

In other words, just as “Internet marketer” is a meaningless term because the Internet has become so diverse and complex, exactly the same thing is happening to social media. And that means that each day “social media marketer” is becoming less ad less meaningful.

The takeaway for smart marketers and marketing students concerned about their personal brand? If you are interested in this space, get knowledgeable and get specific. Find a cutting edge area, get skilled in it, and lead.

That’s the way to brand yourself. With a point of difference that is actually different. And that matters. And that will make you matter.

And what do you really think you can deliver on anyways: being “the social media person” or the “online research community specialist”? If you think the former, especially because it sounds vaguer and thus easier, I think you have an even bigger lesson to learn.

My advice? Social media marketers–Go Forth and Specialize.

Posted in Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Academic Life, Conferences & Presentation, Word of Mouth Marketing, Communities and Tribes | Print | No Comments »

July 2, 2011 by Robert Kozinets.

A couple of days ago, as I wrote in my last blog posting, I spoke at a Social Media Day gathering in an interesting, concert-like downtown Queen West Toronto venue, to an interesting and varied crowd.

After I had left the stage and assumed a position within the audience, beer in hand, a woman began talking to me in the crowd. Let‘s call her “Jennifer.“ Jennifer told me that she knew nothing about social media even a few weeks ago, but that her husband had bought her an iPad for their anniversary and now she was devoting all sorts of time to learning it. She had driven up from Niagara Falls –about a 2-hour drive–in order to see the Social Media Day event.

“I want to become a social media guru,“ she said to me, with a big, winning, business-y smile.

Gotta tell ya, Jennifer. That‘s just about the last thing the world needs. That, another horndog politician, and four bucks will get you a Starbucks latte.

I keep hearing this term “social media guru“ everywhere, usually in puffed-up self-proclamations (which my mom always taught me were faint praise, anyhow) as in “Hi, I‘m George, and I‘m an alcoholic–and a Social Media guru.“

Now, give me a big fat molten chocolate-covered break.

Yes, I know the word guru officially and originally meant “wise teacher? in Hindi. Even so, if you say you are a social media teacher, what are your designations, where is your accreditation, who certifies you to teach about it? It is supposed to mean one with great knowledge and/or wisdom, who uses that wisdom to teach and guide others on a spiritual path. What the heck does it mean to be a self-realized and Fully Ascended Social Media Master, anyways? Is there supposed to be something Intensely Spiritual about the Like Button?

And, here’s the gist. Doesn’t anyone using that honorific realize that, since the days of Bhagwan Shree Rhagneesh, EST, and the whole weird 1970s ESALEN California spirituality vibe thing, the use of the designation “guru” in the West always contains with it more than a salt shaker‘s worth of irony, as well a distinctly greenish tinge of worldly avarice lying just underneath spiritual rhetoric, and leading, almost inexorably, to fleets of Rolls Royces?

I mean, come on. “Guru?“ Guru? Really? In the West? In 2011? Without irony?

Me, I am a Ph.D who studied social media in my dissertation and a Full Professor now, and I have had a strong social media component to my classes since 1999. That’s twelves years ago, for those who are counting. I began teaching the first social media course in Canada, and one of the first in the world, in 2007, calling it “Word of Mouth Marketing.“ I have developed multiple courses at undergraduate, graduate, and PhD levels to teach Social Media Marketing and Management. Those course outlines are being used by dozens of other professors around the world right now.

And I am definitely no “Social Media Guru.” No thanks.

I much prefer to be known as a Still-Learning Social Media Expert-in-Progress. Or a Social Media Researcher. Social Media Pioneer? I think I have probably earned that one. I have been researching and writing in this area since 1995, with multiple publications in top peer-reviewed scientific journals. That is legitimacy. I pioneered a social media research approach and method. I have consulted to industry on these matters since before there were blogs. I was one of the first researchers to clearly specify the importance of social media to marketing. I have been in this space for 16 years. Like the few true experts in this area, I can give specific examples of what I have accomplished, rather than writing yet another book with some trendy title that is also subtitled “How Your Company Can Profit From Facebook and Twitter” and calling myself by some ridiculously inapplicable Indian honorific.

So please forgive me for being more than a little ticked off at the gathering of “Social Media Gurus” like ants at the proverbial picnic. While this boom is still booming, they will keep swarming. And I feel entitled to spray a little Raid.

As far as I am concerned, if someone comes up and tells you they are a social media guru, they are telling you, essentially, that they have a Facebook and Twitter account, talk about it to their friends and family, and hope to one day cash in on their “spiffy mailing list“ of 406 friends and 217 followers. Maybe they have even written one of the 968 popular business press books about social media you can find lying around the shelves of your local bookstore like old remaindered copies of The Celestine Prophesy or The Coming Stock Market Crash of 2003.

If they come up and tell you they are a Social Media Guru, here is what I think you should say to them. Because it is probably just as true. Don‘t ask them for their credentials (I will write more about some interested efforts at WOMMA, at Universities, and at NetBase soon to tap in this market need soon). Don‘t ask them what is new or original about their approach. Certainly don‘t ask them if they know more about social media itself, or about its application to real marketing or business strategy needs (that might really confuse them). No, you just look them right in the eye nice and steady and say:

“Wow. Me too.“

Posted in Academic Life, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Conferences & Presentation, Netnography, Word of Mouth Marketing, Marketing Research, Marketing News & Insights | Print | 1 Comment »

June 29, 2011 by Robert Kozinets.

If you are in Toronto, and we haven’t met, here’s a last minute chance.

I will be talking tomorrow at the Social Media Day 2011 Mashup, as organized by Michael  Nussbacher.

I will be giving an introduction and overview of netnography. Some new stuff, mostly familiar stuff. It is intended for an audience unfamiliar with the virtues of cultural research using social media.

Here’s the link: http://www.meetup.com/Mashable/Toronto-CA/103816/

If you can make it, please introduce yourself. I enjoy meeting the readers of this blog, and thanking you in person for your support and readership.

Posted in Qualitative Research Methods, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Academic Life, Conferences & Presentation, Marketing Research, Technology, Netnography, Word of Mouth Marketing | Print | No Comments »