“You’ll laugh so much you might pee your pants”, Sam Decker, who strolled in with a slicked back Elvis wig and dark shades said.  Sean McDonald, writer of “The five stage social engagement journey” followed suite wearing a gray wig, “the educational value of this session will be really low, the entertainment value, really high.”

This session, entitled Tired of Fu*king Social Media Experts? was setup like a game show with Richard Yang, head of Visa Marketing, as a judge.  People are selected from the audience to answer social media questions and when picked, they set up front in one of two chars.  After the contestants answer the question, Yang picks the winner.  The loser has to sit back down and then a new contestant is selected from the audience for a chance to win a 100 dollar bill and to be dubbed the Social Media Expert of SXSW.

Questions:

1. Should a brand have a Facebook strategy?  Why or why not.
   Not only should a company have a Facebook strategy, but they should have a social media strategy.  It’s about content, type of conversations and listening.
2. How do you calculate social media ROI?
   Google Analytics, HootSuite, Omniture, etc.  You can track inbound links, # of shared tweets, # of followers, # of Likes, etc.
3. What makes a social media expert?
   Social media is still a growing and emerging media, so aside from knowing the ins and outs of social media, you have to be willing to fail.
4. If a company is hiring a social media consultant, what should they be delivering?
   Assessment of a company’s needs first.
5. How do you recover from a social media mistake?
   Pure transparency and honesty.  People see through the smoke in mirrors.
6. With the recent Chrysler twitter mishap (an employee tweeted something negative from their Twitter account), how do you prevent something like this from happening?
   You can’t prevent mistakes, they are going to happen.  The best thing to do is have an emergency plan in place to address such as thing if it comes up.
7. Do you think the Gap did a good job in reaction to the community in regards to changing their logo?
   You should have crowd sourced the logo.  People will out you if it’s not authentic behavior.  Don’t go and make a change overnight.  Shouldn’t have made the change on the whim and should not have changed it back just because of pressure from social media and / or blogosphere.
8. What type of bad habits do social media people have that you should watch for when hiring?
   Have the person submit a writing sample.  Make a commitment no matter who you hire.  It’s one thing to have a lot of Twitter followers, but the thing that gets lost is how can this person come into the business that understands and build strategic foundations to enhance conversion rates, to redefine product design, etc.  Just because someone is socially active, they still might not be able to represent the brand.  This person should understand the organization big or small and that determines what type of person you should hire.