If you’re looking for some great thought-leaders in marketing and social media check out this list below. Read their blog and the comments others make. Follow them on Twitter and attend meetups and conferences where they’ll be speaking. Many of them have terrific books available. For more details on these individuals and some others, check out the list on my personal website.

For quick and easy adding of these people to your “follow” lists, check out my Google RSS folder for Influencers and two lists from Twitter: Marketing Influencers and for a great list of many more individuals who I follow and participate with in the greater Marketing Conversation check out the marketing-conversation list.

Andrew Lark http://andylark.blogs.com/andylark/
Andy Beal http://www.marketingpilgrim.com
Andy Sernovitz  http://www.damniwish.com
Augie Ray   http://blogs.forrester.com/augie_ray
Jacob Morgan   http://www.jmorganmarketing.com
JD Lasica   http://www.socialmedia.biz
Mitch Joel  http://www.twistimage.com/
Blake Cahill   http://blog.visibletechnologies.com
Brian Solis   http://www.briansolis.com
Chris Brogan     http://www.chrisbrogan.com
David Meerman Scott    http://www.webinknow.com/
Jeremiah Owyang  http://www.web-strategist.com/blog
John Jantsch    http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog
Lee Odden     http://www.toprankblog.com
Seth Godin     http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/
Shiv Singh     http://www.goingsocialnow.com/
Tara Hunt      http://www.horsepigcow.com
Valeria Maltoni     http://www.conversationagent.com/

In the business world, it seems to me that “sponsored” conversations are just as unreal.

Recently, one of my favorite marketing industry influencers, Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) wrote a post titled As Marketing Shifts Back to the Everyman. I regularly read Chris’ blog, so I would have read this anyway… but when I saw the titled in my RSS feed I thought it might be about some type of shift in how companies are becoming more moral in their marketing. Having gotten a BA in Theater before my master’s in marketing, when I read Everyman in the title, I assumed it was a reference to the 15th century morality play of the same name.

Uh, I was wrong, but the post wasn’t too far off talking about morality in marketing. Well, maybe not “morality,” exactly, but morality as defined in one dictionary.com meaning: The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct. Chris’ post covered his thoughts on marketing’s shift from impersonal interactions in favor of more personal communication.

“Marketing is shifting away from impersonal interactions and back towards the more effective world of word of mouth. Blended with the world of word-of-mouth, however (or maybe more accurately, I should say that word of mouth is only one tool in the bag), are sponsored conversations. Ted Murphy just recorded a video about these recently. The only difference is that in one, things happen a bit more organically. In the other, there’s a bit of a push (which usually involves money or a product or a service changing hands).

To me, they’re like a driver and a putter (not that I play golf). Getting people to pay attention in this saturated market is requiring more and more creative marketing. I, for one, see that to be content marketing. But once you get onto the green (or in the financial sense, the case to earn some green), I think word of mouth is the more finesse-level tool. Make sense”

Chris’ post started out by explaining that he is sent a lot of products to try out because companies recognize that he’s an influential online persona who is highly likely to blog about a product he likes and his audience reach is vast so a company can be sure many people will see a post written by Chris and some people will even pass it on to others.

I suppose Chris was making the connection between products he tries out and blogs about and “sponsored” conversations because he sees the act of a company sending him the products to try as “sponsoring” the conversation about that product. One of the reasons I trust Chris as an influencer is because I know he believes in transparency. He would never endorse anything that he personaly has a stake in without being totally explicit on his involvement with that company/product/person, etc.

I disagree that this is “sponsored” conversation in the market place. I think it’s just a good tactic for a company to do. It’s actually very risky, far more risky than other marketing sponsorships may be. If the influencer doesn’t like the product, they could easily blog about that. Also, in the case of someone like Chris, the readership will know that Chris isn’t randomly sharing his thoughts on a product just because. Here’s where the reality TV connection comes in. The fact that Chris was sent the product by the company changes the reality of how he might think about it and/or whether he’d actually share that info with anyone.

If Chris went through a purchase process of his own to find a product to fulfill a want or need and then he recommended that product on his blog, that would be an organic conversation moment. But perhaps he doesn’t really need a new product to fulfill a want or need, but a company chooses to send him something to try out. If he likes it, great, but would he have ever even looked for it if they hadn’t sent it to him? Would he be as inspired to write about his enthusiasm for the product if he had gone through a painstaking purchase process? The product may be awesome, but what if the buying experience sucked? He wouldn’t know because reality of needing/wanting something, finding out what best fulfills that want/need, and going through a purchase process is altered for him.

Just food for thought.

My Idiom Strategies partners and I have been working our way through the long list of social media monitoring tools that have suddenly emerged–many of which are mentioned in a Social Media Today posting. So far we’ve either been seriously under-impressed by features or overly-impressed by functionality, but at an unrealistic price. (We hope to get around to summarizing our impressions in a later blog post.)

Today, I’d like to share an experience I had yesterday with someone from one of these companies reaching out to me because of a comment I made on Twitter. For full disclosure I’ll explain that I made 2 tweets yesterday–feel free to see the original tweets http://twitter.com/chrissfife and follow future flubs… I mean comments

Tweet 1:

Bad demo by Reputrack. Service sounds good,  sales guy couldn’t sell water to dehydrated camel. Maybe I’ll find a senior person, maybe not.

Tweet 2:

Demoing thru list of monitoring tools http://bit.ly/BO3zY Definite no to Converseon Too $ for monitoring brand & sounds like they smam

My Apologies:

I sincerely extend my apologies to both companies and encourage anyone interested in these types of monitoring tools to request a demo. Just because they weren’t going to work for what we are looking for, does not give me cause to be rude. Honestly, I have no excuse. I was in a bad mood and made flubs. I don’t apologize for having an opinion about their offerings, but simple that I wasn’t being polite in my comments about them.

1) Reputrack. The monitoring tool actually sounded very interesting and could possibly have worked for monitoring the market conversation (different than just monitoring social media for brand mentions). My comment about the sales person was totally uncalled for. It was based on my opinion that I didn’t feel the company/sales person showed any interest in feedback on how the service could be used in a context they hadn’t thought of and showed no interest in exploring anything if we didn’t want the out of the box option–in such an emerging market space I consider this a major missed opportunity for their company or any company who takes an approach like this. Regardless, I could have tweeted something that addressed that rather than the rude comment about the salesman.

2) Converseon. This one is a far more interesting a case. Though my tweet was in no way personal I did make a very blatant claim that they smam without qualifying that the demo sounded like there product could be “used” for smam. I stand by my opinion that they are too expensive and that the demo I was given made it sound like there tool can be used for smam (social media spam–pasting marketing bullet points and product pitches in social media outlets similar to posting banner ads on websites), but in hindsight it would have been more polite to be more objective.

So, in participating in the market conversation after such flubs, I chose to face it head on. I sent an apology tweet. I will be emailing each company with an apology and a link to this post and I raised the question of “How do you correct conversation flubs?” in the Idiomatic: Conversation Marketing group on LinkedIn, in which I again apologized and shared what had happened and how I was going to address it.

Now the interesting stuff… I received an email from Converseon:

Hi Christine — we haven’t met yet, but i saw your tweet today regarding Converseon following a discussion our team had with you.

For Conversation Mining, as im sure you’re finding, there’s a wide range of solutions and quality of solutions.  It ranges from the most basic “clipping type” service to deep levels of sentiment analysis for insights.  We tend to play on the higher end and find that the mantra — you get what you pay for — tends to be a truism in the space.   I hope you find the right fit for your organization.

As for the comment about “spamming,” im not sure what the basis of this was.   Converseon has been in business since 2001 – making us one of the oldest and most reputatble social media agencies — and hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards.   We are governing members of WOMMA and a member of the ethics committee.  Our work for leading brands has won numerous awards for their effectiveness, innovation  and ethical approach.    We hold our reputation in high regard.    I think it’s important if comments are made about us “spamming” that they are based on some level of factual basis.   Any type of spamming approach is diametrically opposed to all we stand for and do.

While we are not a good fit for partnership, I do hope that discussions regarding each others capabilities are based on fact and mutual respect for each others achievements in the industry.

I am, of course, available to discuss further directly with you if you’d like.

I wish your agency the best success in the marketplace.

My analysis of this conversation interaction.

1. They’re listening! That’s great. Companies should be listening to what is being said about them and that’s why these tools and services are emerging right now.
2. They faced negative user-generated content head on. Fantastic! They didn’t shy away, but sought me out and sent me a direct message that wasn’t canned or copy and pasted. This really shows they were listening closely.
3. They made a stand and shared their views. Super props for having conviction! In saying that they are opposed to spam and wanting me to know the activities they’re involved in to illustrate their convictions is commendable.
4. Missed Opportunity? Though the email is essentially polite and wishing us well at the end, I think they missed a great opportunity to accept feedback for future improvements, better understand their audience and share their companies true convictions.

In my first read through, I felt they were more concerned that I’m spreading false truths than in why I ended up with that impression after a demo. Hmmmmm? I would have felt better if they’d shown concern for why I ended up with that impression they don’t want consumers to have. Obviously my thoughts on the product weren’t fantastic, but I would have been very impressed if they had indicated they were sorry that I took that impression away from the demo as it isn’t what they are trying to do. And it would have made me feel important as a consumer if they’d have asked me for feedback on the demo so they can see if they need to make any messaging adjustments or refresh the sales team’s approach to ensure clearity of their services.  I would have happily replied to explain why I developed the impression I did. I would also have explained that I didn’t write “spam,” I wrote “smam” which I defined above and perhaps their views on that are just different than ours.

I do wish them all the best in their practice and I’m sure their clients receive great benefits from their work. I highly recommend that anyone looking at these tools contact both companies for a demo.

My 2-cents of advice for companies trying to engage in their market conversation: 1) try not to let a bad mood for the day make you bitchy in your participation; and 2) approach every negative comment about your company/product as an opportunity to improve, better understand your audience and share your companies true convictions.

I’ve been following Andy Sernovitz for quite some time now. Andy is an 18 year veteran of interactive marketing, created the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, authored a book, and participates in a wide variety of activities.

Andy recently wrote a blog post about blog etiquette and what he considers SPAM to be when it comes to commenting on posts. Comment SPAM includes:

• Repeating your website address inside a comment instead of in the website address box
• Posting a comment that has nothing to do with the post, like “Nice post! Thanks!”
• Using an email address that does not match your name

I don’t mean to be rude, but if your comment looks spammy, I’ll delete it or edit out the selfish bits. If you do it a lot, I’ll report you as a spammer (which means your IP address will be blocked from most blogs).

These days, people who use a bullhorn approach to get their message out – without contributing in some way, shape or form to the conversation – will soon lose their voice.

The market is a conversation. Conversation Marketing focuses a company’s resources on participating in the conversations with content that addresses the Listeners needs, motivates Participants and enhances the Influencers conversation topics. Add value to the conversation and you’ll drive your business further. Fail to add value and there are serious risks.

Be sure to listen to what is being said. Share your opinions. Build relationships. Participate in the dialogue.

If you don’t, you may soon find yourself speechless…

Why Social Media Fails–and How to Fix It was a panel that included Peter Kim of the Dachis Corporation, Charlene Li of The Altimeter Group and Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research. The audio from the session can be heard here. They covered issues that most marketers are trying to determine how to address when it comes to instituting social media programs:

1. How can I get my culture to adapt?
2. How can I make my campaigns work?
3. What am I supposed to measure?
4. Does social media even matter?

The comments by the panel and comments and questions from the audience were interesting. I agreed with some and didn’t agree with others. I urge you to listen and decide for yourself. In my humble opinion (ok, I’m not actually that humble), the answers to these questions are:

1. Business cultures probably don’t need too much adoption so long as you don’t approach the Head Hancho with a plan for “social media marketing.” Executives have always been open to “how to achieve the company goals.” Your plug for funding your programs would be better received if you highlight how “participating the market conversation” and “interacting with Influencers, Participants and Listeners” of the market conversation will achieve increased sales win ratios, more qualified direct leads, shorter sales cycles and reduced costs in consumer research.
2. You can’t make your social media campaigns work. As Charlene commented during the session, you need to stop considering these tactics as campaigns. What you can do to get quantitative results is to continually practice, as a company, active interaction with the market conversation ecosystem, whether through social media technologies or at a face-to-face meeting. Don’t forget, though, that ecosystem will turn you off if you come at them with the same old marketing bullet points and sales pitches. Don’t talk at people, have a conversation with them.
3. First and foremost, you need to measure what prompted a sale. No matter what, marketing can only be measured successfully if you know why your customers actually purchased. Brand building is very important, but not that measurable in statistics. What finally prompted a sale to happen is something you can easily ask your customer. Other than that, you want to measure the amount of interaction your company has with current and potential customers, the quality of the market conversation content (do they mention your company/product? Are your product offerings in line with what the market conversation says it wants/needs? Are you listening to the conversation to make sure your roadmap is going in the right direction? Are you addressing the market conversation with how to help fulfill their wants and needs or just with why your product should be what fulfills those wants/needs?
4. Absolutely. People are social. We build vast and complex networks of family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, community members, etc. With the new technologies now available these networks have become even larger and more complex. People want to know. They want to share. They’re looking for advice. No one is an expert on everything, and no matter who you are, there will be a time when you have a want or need to fulfill but you don’t want to make a decision without the knowledge of experts. You’ll hope to find someone who can share their experience on fulfilling the same need or want.

The Conversation is what businesses need to focus on and social media technologies are the crowning jewel of tools to achieve that.

Next on the agenda is a Web2Open unconference session to talk about engaging with the market conversation ecosystem to achieve business goal. And later, Tara Hunt’s session: The Whuffie Factor: The 5 Keys for Maxing Social Capital and Winning with Online Communities which will cover these five key points from her soon to be released new book The Whuffie Factor.