And then they tell you to reach out to influencers.

Do you see the irony here? You reach out to influencers in hopes that they’ll broadcast the message to their audience (we’ve talked about before). Which, you know, wreaks of top-down marketing.

When it comes to building communities or ambassador programs, both ways – top down and bottom up – can be effective. But here’s where it gets interesting. We will use influencers to broadcast that we’re looking for a specific type or person – and one of the qualifiers IS NOT which social sites they are on or how many followers/friends they have. The main qualifiers are based on passion. That’s the core that we’re looking for. And believe it or not, most of the time those good folks are what us marketers would refer to as “the bottom” when it comes to influence and status on social media.

So it takes both. But instead of starting at the top and hoping that your message gets pushed down, or starting at the bottom and hoping something magical will happen, you need start at both ends and meet in the middle. It might be counter-intuitive, but it works.

And what do you do with assets? Everything within your power to protect them.

It is so fascinating to see how those inside and outside of a company view the role of ambassadors. Remember, at the very core, an ambassador is someone who spreads goodwill. And in the context of brand ambassadors, they are spreading goodwill on behalf of your company. That’s it. That’s all. Case closed.

But we see, time and time again, folks with tunnel-vision that want to use ambassadors for other things. First of all, we don’t “use” ambassadors. That word – use – carries with it many definitions. The worst of them pointing towards exploitation. So much time and effort goes into building word of mouth ambassador programs from the ground up. Elevating advocates. Tapping into a passion conversation. Creating a brand identity and sense of ownership. These are things that we do to GIVE to the ambassadors. To raise them up. To empower them. And when it’s done right, our ambassadors feel like we’re ambassadors for them. (See how that works?)

As ambassador programs grow, other departments in the company start to take notice. And when this happens, then those responsible for the program take on a new responsibility – to serve as a shield for the ambassadors. Yes, I hate to say it, but we have to pay attention to the times where we need to protect our ambassadors so they can be what they were meant to be. Ambassadors are not there to get you more views to your YouTube video or more reviews for your product on Amazon. Ambassadors are not there to bump up sales of that old product or retweet your promotion. That’s not their purpose. That’s what the marketing and advertising departments are for. Sure, sometimes as a halo effect those things will naturally happen. But if you go to the ambassador well asking them to do something for you that they don’t really care about, how much are they going to feel appreciated? Did they raise their hand and pick up the banner of your brand so they could pimp out their friends and followers? Or because they believe in something bigger than themselves?

So don’t forget that one of your most important jobs is protecting your ambassadors. After all, they’re out there protecting you – both online and off. And they want you to have their back just like they have yours. That’s how successful relationships work.

Get Real with Spike 7 from Social Fresh on Vimeo.

Or maybe not.

Working at a global agency and for big ‘ol brands, I can tell you this: in the real world, your online influencer rating will probably get you some sort of special treatment or a one-off sursey (that’s Southern for “free, unexpected gift”) every now-and-again. Apart from that, as you might have guessed, your Klout or Kred score isn’t worth much – if anything. And, as you also know, when it comes right down to it, brands engage in social because they wanna sell more stuff. That’s where all marketing and communications paths lead.

So when it comes to influence, I want to know how one person influenced another person to actually make a purchase. That’s the influence that I care about. Crack that nut and you’re on to something.

Using things that exist on the World Wide Web today, here’s a thought: The Klouts and Kreds need to hook up with the places where people leave recommendations or are actively making a purchase. Think Amazon or even something like OpenTable. Because these people are already raising their hand and actively participating to let others know their actions and opinions. So when they leave a rating or review – or make a purchase or a reservation – why not give them a field to “give credit” to the person that influenced them to make that purchase? This could be done by simply entering that person’s twitter account.

Yes, I realize that this is flawed idea. Because people aren’t going to volunteer their buddy’s twitter handle for fear a brand will spam them. That’s valid. But maybe by signing up for Klout you give permission – or even opt-in to a program- to contact that individual. Then people could really be rated on their true influence as it correlates to purchases. Because, while it’s nice for someone with 10,000 followers to tweet about my brand, I’d rather know about the guy who has 75 followers but his recommendation (online or off) led to people buying my stuff. That’s a person I’d want to engage.

It could work with anyone from Yelp to Amazon to TripAdvisor to Target’s website…and maybe has the potential to open up a whole new world.

Again, I know it’s flawed. But it might be a place to start. And if you do build on it and make millions, I have some requests.

Kthxbye.

Yeah, he's being social.

I don’t do resolutions. Or lists. Not that there’s anything wrong with those that do. (There is.) But here’s one thing that I will say about 2012: I’m taking the word “social” back.

Somewhere along the way, after it got slapped in front of anything old that marketers wanted to make new again (I’m looking at you media, business, community, etc.), “social” lost its way. If you were to go to a marketing conference or walked into a PR company and asked 20 people what social meant, yeah, you’d get 20 different answers.

But I digress.

Enough is enough. Now, I’m not implying that we should stop using the word, let’s just start using it like it was intended to be used. Being social online is different from being social offline. In most cases, you’re isolated when you’re using online social media. You’re in your own little world. Maybe in an airport or in your guest room/office at home. No matter what the case, everything you do is being filtered through that glass screen.

Social offline is really SOCIAL in the truest sense of the word. I find it so ironic that one of the definitions of social is “living or disposed to live in companionship with others or in a community, rather than in isolation.” I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from that one.

So, in 2012, I’m taking social back – and not trying to pry it from the hands of the internet kids – to make social, SOCIAL. In other words, we will truly connect online to offline and offline to online. One drives the other. Always. If we are truly social beings, then it’s fair to say that we crave physical interaction from others. (That’s skin and bones, kids, not avatars.) After all, the best times of your life don’t happen on your smartphone or your iPad. And the sooner we all realize that, the sooner we can make social mean something more than the fairy dust we sprinkle on our new biz pitches.

Onward.

Kevin Briody, Director of Strategic Innovation, Ignite Social Media
Joseph Jaffe, Author/Speaker/Consultant, GetTheJuice.com and JaffeJuice.com
Noah Kerner, Founder/President, Noise (Check out Intel Innovators Program)

We chatted about a lot of things, including the leaked Google+ memo, Netflix’s flip-flopping, social presence versus social ad buys and the (non) staying power of celebrity-in-the-making TV shows (and the brands that associate themselves with them).

So sit back, relax and take a listen.

Get the direct link to the show here.

Listen to it on iTunes here.

1. Do you REALLY want a relationship with a brand?

And

2. Do you REALLY want to “humanize” your brand?

I’m thinking “no.”

Get Real with Spike 6 from Social Fresh on Vimeo.

Of course, I’ve weighed in with my fair share of thoughts about how we’re making steps towards some sort of standard, but from the looks of things right now, we’re a long way off.

But I digress.

The point of this post is that I really don’t think that we should label those social media kids that brands try to get in front of as influencers. We should call them what they are: broadcasters.

If you haven’t read this gem of a post written by Zack Bussey that goes inside the mind of a typical “social media influencer” entitled “Social Media Influencers Suck,” you need to.

We feel we deserve it because of what we do after receiving it – we blog, tweet and share it on Facebook. Our blog readers read it, our thousands of followers on Twitter see it and our close friends on Facebook listen to what we say. Simply stated, we give you access to the people we know, and we’re giving it to you rather cheaply.

Read the whole thing. Seriously.

But when you read all the articles about what influence is and isn’t, when you dig into Klout and Kred and all the things written about them, when you get right down to it: these people are broadcasters. And that means that we’re back in a typical media placement cycle. Okay, maybe not typical, but you get the idea. There is an audience. There is a brand who wants access to the audience. A transaction takes place – sometimes paid, sometimes an experience, sometimes “gifted.” And then the brand is placed in front of audience for a limited amount of time.

Being on the PR/Branding/Marketing Communications side of the fence, I watch in awe at how a handful of these bloggers/influencers behave. And I’m fascinate at how these people – who claim to be marketing professionals – react and attack brands. Even at times holding them hostage. And they would never advise a client to act that way online. Yes, there are times when being outraged is warranted (like when they’re deliberately deceived) but other times, come on. They’re even attacking the very companies that have helped them get where they are. And on a side note, do they think that more brands will want to hire them because of this behavior? Do you think that more brands will even approach them in the future? Not likely.

I believe that they days of the social media influencer – as we know them – are numbered. A time is quickly approaching when brands will realize that there are other – more effective – ways to reach their audience and that in fact social media influencers are gatekeepers with no gates at all. They will be obsolete. And the playing field will be level.

And the beauty of that spotlight is that you can shine it on anything you want.

Most of the time we shine it on ourselves as a brand. Rightly so, eh? After all, we built the damn thing. And it took a lot of time, money and effort to do so. Our latest sale. Promotions. Thought-leadership. Innovations. Messaging, messaging, messaging.

But what if we spun that sucker around one day and started shining it on our audience? What if we made them feel like the rock stars? What if we gave them all the attention and they could hear the roar of the supportive crowd? Maybe it’s a group of them. Maybe you ask them to step into the spotlight one-by-one. There are numerous possibilities. But they all have to do with sharing the stage and stepping into the background. At least for a while. So it’s not “LOOK! It’s a sale on product X!!” Instead, it’s “LOOK! This guys is awesome. And we KNOW him!!!”

Think about it this way: when a celebrity establishes a non-profit, they are essentially using their spotlight to highlight something that’s important to them. They’ve spent a lot of time working on their own brand and now they have the opportunity to say, “Hey everybody, I know you’re looking at me, and so now look at this, because it means something to me.”

Why can’t we do that as brands? We can show the world that customers – especially people that already love us – are important to us. That those people mean something to us.

Just a thought.

Get Real with Spike 5 from Social Fresh on Vimeo.