The debate  has been around for a while but, as illustrated by the chart below, there’s an increased level of conversations about Social Media Expert in 2009 (as measured in the pool of +1000 SMM blogs we read on and off at eCairn):

The good news is that more marketers are moving into social media, which, we all know is a bit of a mess. Thus they need more help. The bad news is that they’re few experts out there and they may not even call themselves expert.

Some good lists of characteristics to look after in a so called expert:

• Kyle offers his 25 steps to choosing a SM consultant
• David has a similar one
• Dawn has more

Interesting:  According to Gladwell in Outliers, it takes about 10,000 hours of work at any one specialty — which equates to about 10 years of solid experience — to reach a superior level.
I translate that as “experience is key” – no surprise here.

]]> http://blog.ecairn.com/2009/04/07/social-media-expert-social-media-consultant-who-isisnt/feed/ 0 laurentpf posts_for_sm_expert_by_week1 http://blog.ecairn.com/2009/03/09/746/ http://blog.ecairn.com/2009/03/09/746/#comments Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:20:09 +0000 eCairn http://blog.ecairn.com/?p=746 ]]> After the Top150 Social Media Marketing Blogs & the Top150 SEO/SEM blog, we bring your another top 150: The Top150 blogging blogs (i.e: blogs that offer tips on how to blog: write, build traffic, make money…)

For those who are wondering how the ranking is decided, go here. It’s not rocket science.

Ok, now here’s the list:

If you want to know more on how we map communities and how to market to industry influencers,  we’re organizing a  FREE webinar next week and would be very happy to have you with us, click here to register:  Webinar

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We just implemented our “influence ranking algorithm“.

So we ran it against the ~1000 ‘social media marketing’ blogs we monitor on an ongoing basis (along with tweets, forums, Q&As…).

We will publish the list every other month (please follow our Twitter account : ecairn for early notice). Here is the last September 2010 version.

Below is the top 150 list, you can also find it at http://tops.ecairn.com/ along with other top 150 lists covering other areas of marketing.
( When compared to the Adage Power 150 reference, remember we zoomed particularly on social media marketing. Plus the list contains only blogs written in English).

Here is an OPML Link, from Matt Shaulis, to the list if you want to import in your reader.