JW5150

I have to give a tip of the hat to Jaffe, Brogan, Livingston, Strout, and Verdino for putting themselves on the block as consultants on eBay. It’s to raise money for charity, but I see it as an indicator of the point in evolution of the Social Media Consultant (in contrast to the critics who have coined the phrase Social Media Douchebag).

There can be no whining, crying or questions, the numbers are out there for the whole world to see and bid on. The questions is: Can all of the Social Media Hype cross over to become honest buzz, and better yet, profitable business?

The biggest blind spot in the Social Media Consultant is the marketing of services to the converted. Talking about your social media prowess on twitter and through Facebook is showing off your flycasting in the sandbox. There are no other fishermen there to pay you for lessons and you qualify as a hobbyist, not a professional.

The fun part is that this is no longer concerned with social media, it will come down to marketing. Who will do the best job of getting their message beyond the fishbowl? My money is on Jaffe, and I know it’s lame to take the odds on favorite, but with 2 books and a ton of speaking gigs around the globe, he’s got the best reach. (I think he’s also got the foresight to see what a $10k deal could do across the board for hype. I wouldn’t think less of any of them for going Red Saber to do whatever is necessary to get that number up)

Right now, 9 days left, no bids in yet. Here’s the links to add to your “My Ebay”.

Brogan.

Jaffe.

Livingston.

Strout.

Verdino.

Let’s get ready to rumble…

btw, Verdino was in the original post but wasn’t up when I checked, more news as it happens… Link added!

I’ve complained a number of times before about not being able to get the television show Heroes on iTunes anymore. When I got the Tivo up and rolling last week one of the things I was looking forward to was trying out Amazon Unbox. I wasn’t expecting much from the service, I thought it was more of a media player that may have some commercials running prior to the show.

Instead, it’s a full featured media store. I downloaded a bunch of episodes to the Tivo and was surprised to see I had the rights to also download the episodes to my laptop. Even more impressive, they run without any trouble on my work laptop (it has a crummy graphics card and it cannot play an iTunes video, or a DVD without stuttering when running only on battery power). The good news is that it worked, the bad news is I then proceeded to watch 6 episodes of Heroes straight on a recent flight to San Jose. (For those who care, Season 2 is not as good as season 1 but is still a lot of fun).

It also says I have rights to download to a media player, such as iPod, which I should test but probably won’t get around to. The other good news – while on the road the connection at the Fairmont was good enough that I was able to pick up some episodes of Battlestar Galactica that I haven’t been able to get to.

I had a chance last week to chat with Mac McIntosh last week, I first met him a few years back when he was speaking at a MarketingSherpa event, he came away as the highest ranked speaker of the event and stood ahead of the rest of the crowd. I stole one of his techniques immediately – he was on the second day of the event and he kept notes of the previous presenters and integrated some of their points into his slide deck on the fly. By building on the presenters before him he had a distinct advantage over a presenter who just showed up for their time slot.

The reason I bring this up is that Mac has been doing consulting for years and doing it for a living.  A sharp contrast from “social media experts” who sheepishly admit that there is not enough going around yet to “quit your day job”. This ties into two things that I’ve seen bouncing around lately – one is the idea of Internet Famous, Dirt Poor. There’s a growing number of people who have thousands of followers and are well know worldwide, yet have no way to monetize this. Unless you are famous for a reason that is going to bring you some money all you are left with is an overflowing inbox and maybe even some stalkers.

On the other hand, there is some karma at work. If you have a network of thousands, there’s some benefits that indirectly can help you out. The next time you are looking for a job you won’t have to wade through a bunch of Monster Postings or spend a lot of time digging. You can also get most questions answered quickly by tapping into the shared wisdom around you. But again – nothing concrete to pay the mortgage and bring the box of Yodels home for the kids.

The other thing rattling around in my brain lately is the idea of things that are boring, or incredible difficult (better yet, both) as things that generate value. The theory is that the more challenging or terrible the task, the better you can be paid for it. Anyone who’s had to call a plumber on a holiday after 10pm knows what I am talking about.

So here’s something to think about – are celebrities only walking and talking media products? Now that the amount of media that can be created has been expanded to everyone and the cost of transmitting it near zero, will celebrities be devalued the same way music has?

It’s all about boring. Talking with Mac