Finding Social Media Professionals

There is a long-standing concept in the digital space know as "signal vs noise." The social web creates a LOT of noise - it's one of the things that keeps people from participating in it. Oh, to count the times I have heard, "Why do I care what someone ate for lunch today?" On the contrary, finding the signals within the noise is not easy, not obvious, and when it comes to businesses developing social media campaigns, I do support the likes of, "Don't try this yourself. This ad featured a professional driver on a closed course."

Another long-standing metric that I have found to be true and relevant repeatedly, is that of a professional trainer or professor: know 10 times more than you plan to deliver. That enables you to be able to answer questions from left field, imagine ahead of time what the next steps might be, and be able to support your brightest students. This is one ingredient that makes for a wildly popular speaker, such as Lorelle on Wordpress who will be speaking here in Honolulu for several Hawaii Geek Week events.

Social Media Workshop & Launch of the Hawaii Chapter of the Social Media Club
If your business is interested in learning and developing the best practices for Social Media, please join us for this event on Thursday, October 23, at the Hawaii Prince Hotel in Honolulu, HI. I'll post more about this next week.

How Do You Find Social Media Pros?

The main point of this post though is to list for you several established agencies who have experience and expertise working on the social web - as businesses for businesses. In the spirit of a Retweet on Twitter (when you forward on someone else's comment to your followers), I am re-posting Colin Brownings list of New Social Media Consultant and Agency Listings. Colin has developed a searchable directory of listings, and also had the kindness (and good web strategy) to pull out from those listings and create a blog post.

A warm welcome to the latest social media agencies and consultants on the Constructing Social Builders listing added over the past week, including:

Social Media Consultants:

A warm welcome to the latest social media agencies and consultants on the Constructing Social Builders listing added over the past week, including:

Social Media Consultants:

• Liquid Wireless: An emerging media consulting company
• Digital Response Marketing Group: A consulting, blogger relations and consulting group.
• Uptown Uncorked: Bringing People and Business Together with New Media
• Digital Voodoo: Digital Voodoo is a social media strategy and intelligence firm with expertise in marketing, advertising, and operations.
• Recipe 31: Recipe 31 creates customers through conversations.
• Janet Fouts: Social Media Coach!
• The Michael Schneider: Social Media technologist and groundswell evangelist.

Social Media Agencies:

• Crayon: A different kind of company that specializes in new marketing - new marketing for a new consumer.
• AboutFaceDigital: A new breed of agency specialized and singularly focused on influencing the social graph
• Harbrook Group: We help customers strategize and implement the correct technologies that help them communicate with their customers or constituencies
• Social Media 404: SocialMedia404 is a brand new organization born of the need to bridge the gap between traditional marketing playbooks, and the explosive use of these new technologies.
• Ignite Social Media: Ignite Social Media, the original social media agency (SM), helps brands set and execute social media strategies
• Bare Feet Studios: We develop social media campaigns and specialize in branded online video projects
• Pistachio Consulting: Micro sharing. Macro results. How Twitter and related platformscan inform, accelerate and amplify your business opportunities.
• Studeo: Studeo is a direct marketing agency who also specializes in Social Media.

Ad & PR Agencies:

• Doe-Anderson: Fifth-oldest brand-building agency in the U.S. and home to recognized innovation in social media strategy.
• Racepoint Group: A global public relations agency with special expertise in digital media relations.
• Shift Communications: SHIFT is a full scope PR agency and a pioneer in the social media space with the world’s first Social Media Release.

Interactive Agencies:

• Cramer: Cramer is a digital marketing and event solutions agency
• Rosetta: Translating customer connections into business results
• Studio:Module: a premier graphic design firm with an award-winning portfolio of groundbreaking work in interactive media, corporate communications, and brand identity.
• Tatu Digital Media: Web design, product demos, Wordpress mods and community management

Friday Buzz Report for Bare Feet Blog 080725

I feel like starting virtually very post here with a mea culpa. I have so many blog ideas but often run out of time. After all, we also produce an almost daily video podcast which takes a couple of hours each, and now I am helping to create the unconference PodCamp Hawaii. Of course I Twitter and FriendFeed too, so this mea culpa is now pau! Follow to the end - as I will bring this back to you.

I have some fun news to share and I am practicing talking about us more. I love "pimping out" my friends and clients, but get a frog in my throat when it comes to bragging about our own work.

Beach Walks on Tube Mogul Top 40
Our internet TV show, Beach Walks with Rox, is #26 on Tube Mogul's Top 40 list for June. Tube Mogul is a service that distributes and tracks your videos across multiple sites. It is a great time saver, as I can upload one file and Tube Mogul will send it to as many as 12 other video aggregation sites. We actually only send to 4 sites, so making it onto the leader board is an even greater accomplishment! They have over 30,000 users, so we like being #26, slighty ahead of Mahalo Daily and just behind Sony Pictures and in the company of Rocketboom and Next New Networks.

Top Social Marketing Blog
Also this week, and more of a surprise, this blog was featured on a listing of the Top Social Marketing Blogs. This follows in part from our listing on SocialMedia.Alltop.com, which features the web's best social media blogs.

Diva Marketing Sites Us for Blogger Relations
I participated in my friend Toby Bloomberg's blogger relations survey, and was quoted in her summary report. You can read more about my position on Bloggers vs. Journalists and if you like, check out our Blogger Relations Policy.

Why Does This Matter to You?

1. Hawaii can claim us as a social media expert right here in the ʻāina, ready to assist you with developing and executing a social media campaign. You can take advantage of our expertise, as well as our deep and wide social network of thought leaders.
2. You can realize that success comes from persistence - even when it is spread across seemingly disparate channels. We practice a lot of "be here now" in running our business, and while it may look unfocused or diverse, it is all infused with our attention. And in an attention economy that is just the right currency to be building and spending.
3. By being willing to share my name with my survey feedback, I earned the bonus publicity. Know when to step out from the anonymity cloak; it's a great way to let others help you share your expertise.

Have you left a blog comment today? Remember, you are of the main beneficiaries when you do!