Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post from Ilana Rabinowitz, Vice-President of Marketing for Lion Brand Yarn Company.

I can imagine what it must have been like when the telephone first became available for  private citizens and people started using it.  They probably had a story to tell about every phone call and how incredible it was to be talking to someone who was actually in another part of town.

It’s easy to imagine, because some time in 1992 I hooked up a modem to my “home computer” and dialed up the internet for the first time.  I remember the twangy, hissing sound of my computer making a phone call.  It was an awe inspiring moment that is etched in my memory. My computer was  “talking” to the outside world.  I felt like the kid in the movie War Games, who hacked the defense system computers. It was the sound of something big happening.

Now we have something just as revolutionary — social media. You can use it to keep up with friends, to build a business, to help elect a president, to learn a new skill, or to raise money for charity.  Look at all the cool stuff you can do with social media!  It’s true. Social media connects us to other people in new ways. It is as important an innovation as the telephone or the internet.  When you see the movie The Social Network, it is easy to understand the feeling of excitement in the room at the moment that Facebook is launched.

Five years after that launch, a large percentage of the world is on Facebook and you’d be hard pressed to find a web site that doesn’t have a few social media buttons on it.

And yet, I say, it’s time for us to get over it.  But don’t mean that it’s over.  I mean, get over the novelty.  A couple of years from now, social media is going to completely integrate itself into our online and offline lives (in that future we will not need to make the distinction between our online and offline lives). In a couple of years (or sooner) social media will infuse virtually everything we do.  It will connect seamlessly into the way that that we learn, advise, listen, play, shop, travel and plan.  We won’t even call it it social media any more than people say “I’ll call you on the telephone” or “I’ll look it up on the internet.”  They just say, “I’ll call you” or “I’ll look it up.”

We need to get beyond the point where we see social media as a separate, extraordinary part of what we as organizations do.  We need to think about how we use the tools of social media in a way that is going to be a natural part of how we as consumers and we as businesses do everything.

Social media will evolve quickly. Right now we are at the point where people are using and developing the tools, sometimes clumsily, occasionally brilliantly but we will figure it out. As the information from Facebook and other social sites gets wired into everything from search to shopping, that layer of information will inform everything and it will shape our world.

What I am also saying is that if people in your organization are talking about how social media is a time waster or are still worried about the ROI of it, or think it is a passing fad  they will have to get over it. Hopefully those are not the people who hold the purse strings.

Editor’s Note: We will feature occasional guest posts from smart peeps from time to time. This is one from one, namely Ilana Rabinowitz, Vice-President of Marketing for Lion Brand Yarn Company.

Rabinowitz approaches marketing with an uncompromising focus on the customer and a grounding in psychology and neuroscience to understand what motivates people to make buying decisions.  She believes that businesses need to develop their own media as a means of creating a branded experience for customers.  She has spoken at digital marketing conferences including Web 2.0, Blogher Business and Internet Retailer. She is the author of a book about psychology, a book about mindfulness and co-author of a book about the culture of knitting.

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Being a digital marketing consultant, or any type of consultant for that matter, is exciting. Working for yourself offers you a lot of freedom. If you’re good … or lucky … you can make more money than you used to make working for someone else. And you can control everything from the types of clients you work with to the hours you decide to spend with them.

But it also presents some different challenges, too. There’s plenty of stress, particularly when you’re first starting out, have no capital and if one client misses a payment you’ll have to sell plasma to make the mortgage. It’s not the same kind of stress you had when you were working for someone else, but it’s there.

You also go through the process of learning your strengths, weaknesses and, most importantly, your limitations. Biting off too much can be disastrous. There’s no sick feeling like the one you get when more than one of your clients are mad at you. But not biting off enough can also be disastrous. You’re back to the plasma thing again.

I’ve had two unfortunate experiences in my now year-and-a-half of experiencing, “life on my own.” One was a shortcoming of a client. The other was, at least I think, a shortcoming of mine. Neither were fun to experience, but both were necessary to help me learn my limitations.

About halfway through year one of Social Media Explorer (the business, not just the blog), I signed a neat client. They engaged me for a fair amount of work and I was able to budget 4-5 months out with them and another couple of accounts so that I could take some time to work on a bootstrapped side project after their busy beginning months were complete. But three months in, the client stopped paying. And by the time I reached my “time off” to focus on my project, the deficit caused by the client’s unwillingness to pay nearly bankrupted me.

But I recovered and let the legal system tend to the issue. I hated that the relationship had to go south, but I don’t work for free and when your lack of concern over your bills affects my children’s ability to eat or live in our home, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for you. I learned the value of contracts, due diligence on accounts receivable, my accountant and a good attorney.

More recently, I came to the end of a year-long engagement with another client and gave them an assessment and recommendation of where we should go next. After getting the go-ahead to submit another contract proposal, they abruptly ended our partnership without much explanation. While we went through some odd challenges together, ones neither of us could have prevented or predicted, and were behind schedule on what we’d set out to accomplish, I can only assume they weren’t happy with my ability to help them.

In retrospect, I keep thinking I could have done more, focused more time or attention to prevent it from turning out the way it did. But you learn to take the client’s wishes and move on.

Dealing with the bad news in client work is never anyone’s favorite thing to do. I’ve always tried to be confident and proud, but understanding and service-oriented when the fit hits the shan, as it were. Do I have shortcomings and limitations? Absolutely. Am I generally pretty effective and well-received by my clients? I sure think so.

At the end of the day you learn more from experiencing the bad than you do from the good. I’m a better person, professional and consultant because I’ve had to fire and sue a client, and because I perhaps didn’t do enough for another. But it doesn’t take away the sting and self-doubt.

How do you handle the bad in your job? Is there a better way to cope and deal than wallow in self-doubt until you smack yourself and have an internal locker room tirade with your confidence? I’m all ears. The comments are yours.

It’s officially Movember, a now annual awareness takeover of the month of November by participating men everywhere who wish to raise awareness among men (and those who care about them) about prostate health and prostate cancer. Movember helps people spread the word that prostate cancer will kill 32,000 men in 2010 alone; that typically lazy or ignorant men (like me) need to be proactive about prostate health and ask their doctor for an examination. And that we need to share the concern and threat of prostate cancer to other men who may not know what Movember is.

The concept of Movember is that men everywhere are encouraged to grow a mustache to show their support of the movement, spread awareness of prostate cancer and raise money for cancer research. When their friends or co-workers drop the “porn stache” reference or ask what’s up with the lip carpet, they can respond with, “Funny, but it’s actually serious. It’s my effort to remind you and others to get your prostate checked, bro.”

My buddy Aaron Perlut, who masquerades as Dr. Aaron Perlut, president of the American Mustache Institute, dared me to join his team and get involved this year after I told him I hesitated to shave my goatee, which I’ve kept in tact since around 2001. I’ve donated before and am happy to share links, spread the word, etc., but my facial hair is my look. This year, though, I thought better of it and figured the cause is more important than my silly vanity.

So I’m clean shaven today for the first time in a decade. I’ll grow what I call the “Perlut” (seen below) for the month of November to keep with the theme (and because it’s more bad ass than the goatee), then let the chin music fill in for the holidays.

But I also want to help raise money for prostate cancer research, so I’ve joined the American Mustache Institute’s Movember team. You can check out my profile page and be a part of it by donating to the cause on my profile page. Ultimately, I’d like to raise a bunch more money than Perlut so I can tell him to shut it, but also because it’s all going for a good cause.

Help me out with a five-spot or whatever you can spare. It’s important than we not only make people aware, but drive action, too. So donate and tell your fathers, brothers, uncles, sons and other male friends and loved ones it’s time to get checked.

It’s the least you can do in exchange for seeing my baby face.

The before shot.		The Perlut. Bad ass.
The porn stache.		The “Mo”

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If you’re in a position of authority, chances are you need to stop doing what you’re doing.  Yes, well-read, wide-eyed golden child, this means you.  You may be good at your job, but you probably suck as a manager.  There, I said it.  Let’s hope you do something about it.

Breakdown

Moliere is attributed with the artful phrase:

“It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do.”

These days, I’m thinking about how this nugget – doing and not doing – applies to business, building a strong pervasive culture, and empowering well-intentioned passionate people.  I’m not a human resources or recruiting professional by any stretch, but it’s clear to me how top-down methods, values, and management styles affect subjective and frequently minimized issues like employee satisfaction, career aspirations, and general life outlook.  If you think this is just “soft fuzzy stuff,” that doesn’t have a wit to do with the bottom line, just wait up a minute.  You can go buy your first clue over at Sametz Blackstone Assoc. by reading Tamsen McMahon’s post covering real-world management lessons.

“…people are at the heart of any change. To make change happen, you have to have people who can make change happen.”  To which I add you need to have people you inspire to pursue change.  And you need to have people who believe you’ll support their methods and defend the outcomes.

If you have the mentality of “They get a paycheck, a darn good one, too.  They better be doing a great job!” you’ve adopted a serf-and-lord mentality that only serves to keep people in check, where they belong, performing rote tasks without hope.  Yes, people should meet the expectations of the role they hold – but if, as a boss, what you really want is innovative calculated risk-takers who think about your business in the middle of the night and Saturday afternoons, then you have to really ask yourself – better yet, ask a management coach – if you’re limiting their outcomes through your own shortcomings.

Shut Up When I’m Talking To You

Adam Singer draws a line between insufferable omnipotent people of power and confidence-inspiring stalwart leaders as he explores marketing and bureaucracy.  His point, as I interpret it, is businesses that empower (support) talented, creative people lay the groundwork for success because by allowing employees to explore options, push conventions, and take educated risks, the company is building an emotional bond with its most valuable assets.  Trust that the people you’ve hired want to achieve – even exceed – goals and they will.

But you say, “It’s not their department/company.  It’s my department/company.  Why would they care about it like I do?  No one cares as much as I do.  I have to look out for things, I’m accountable.  It needs to be done my way or there’s too much risk.”  Baloney.  Give people more credit than that.

Comfortably Numb

Your way is based on your personal world view, and the cynical and disparaging notion that others can’t cogitate as good as you can.  Granted, your world view and talents have served you well, but are you so arrogant as to think yours is the only path to achievement?  Enter clue number two, from Bnet – rob people of their passion and their ownership enough times and you’ll end up with a self-fulfilling prophecy and a cube farm full of drones.  They learned there’s no point in surfacing ideas or ardently defending recommendations.  You’ll have to continue doing things your way.

At the most basic level, employees depend on you.  You’re the boss, after all.  But don’t over-simplify or obfusicate the issue.  Most of us really want more out of life than routine tasks and “Satisfactory” evaluations.  We’re looking for inspiration, for the people and the opportunities that make the daily grind something of personal choice and a source of pride over practical necessity.  We want to succeed and make the boss – the one which encourages our ideas – proud.  Can you honestly you’re creating a nurturing environment?  Or just giving it lip service or a token gesture?

Slippery When Wet

Perhaps this issue of autocratism – trust – was best addressed by a lady sporting tight buns:

“The more you tighten your grip [Tarkin] the more [star systems] will slip through your fingers,” prophetized by Princess Leia in Star Wars:  Episode IV –  A New Hope (1977).

Best of You

The point?  Let go.  Trust that they’ll do what it takes to do a good job.  Give them permission to flounder, even fail.  And trust that if they miss the mark, despite their best efforts, it will matter as much to them as it does to you.  And next time will rock.

“I must follow the people.  Am I not their leader?” –Benjamin Disraeli

Revolution

Alright, so I’m using humor, pop culture, and music trivia to help illustrate my points about leadership and management.  Some of you may deem my approach sophomoric, and I’m okay with that.  Why?  We all have gifts.  I think one of mine is taking seemingly disparate bits, weaving them together, and coming up with something new.  You may get it, you may not.  S’okay, it takes all kinds, right?

In any case, I hope that if you’re a manager you’re now holding that mirror up a little higher and taking a long, hard look.  Change can start with you, and it can start today.  Serve the needs of others through your leadership.  Be open, allow yourself to become vulnerable, and you may be surprised – even humbled – by those around you.

Song title credits:  Seether, Linkin Park, Pink Floyd, Bon Jovi, Foo Fighters, Tracy Chapman

Last month I was asked to speak at the Modern Media Man (M3) Summit, an event that was probably the first male-centric blogging and social media conference. When I was first asked to give a talk for what I thought of as BlogHer for men, I was specifically asked to talk about the role of blogs and bloggers in relation to brands and companies, to help educate bloggers in attendance about the world of brands, marketing and public relations and help bridge the gap between that world and that of bloggers who may or may not want to interact with companies.

I was more specifically asked to talk about some of the mistakes bloggers make when dealing with brands to help those in attendance avoid those mistakes. As I said in my talk, the elephant in the room was, “Jason, tell dad bloggers how not to get the bad reputation being developed by mom bloggers.”

Mind you, I also stipulated several times that not all mom bloggers are guilty of the bad behavior. I said several times that it was an isolated group of them. I also made note that the bad behavior examples were not limited to mom, or even women, bloggers. John Porcaro, now of Dad Central Consulting but formerly a brand-side manager in the gaming industry, even confirmed for the crowd that there are several gaming bloggers out there guilty of the behavior.

One example of the behavior I’m referring to: I was visiting a Fortune 15 brand earlier this year and overheard a conversation about a person they’d invited to participate in a blogger outreach program. They offered a handful of influential bloggers the opportunity to attend a large industry conference, courtesy of the brand. The bloggers were offered conference admission, a flight and hotel room. While they were attending, they would participate in several brand activities and take home the option of writing about the brand in whatever way they saw fit.

At the last minute, one blogger emailed the brand to say she decided to bring her family with her, would need three more plane tickets, a larger hotel room and even intimated that if they didn’t comply, there would be editorial recourse.

Would it surprise you to know this is not only not unheard of, but there are a group of bloggers — slowly being identified by big brands — who routinely pull stunts like this with blogger outreach programs and companies interested in sponsoring their efforts?

Ron Mattocks of Clark Kent’s Lunchbox emailed me after the M3 Summit asking for clarification of my thoughts to help him communicate a similar message. I’m glad he did because it gave me a chance to refine the ideas a bit more. Here’s a curated version of what I sent him. I’m happy to hear your thoughts in the comments.

The Cautionary Tale Of Mom (And Other) Bloggers

I think many (mom) bloggers have done a fantastic job of building an audience, a community around their perspective and have shared lots of great advice and product reviews with millions of people. To take a free blog platform and build an audience around just your experiences, writing and generosity is powerful as hell.

But I think there are a few … a very few, isolated bloggers (moms and others … it’s not exclusive) who have taken the new medium of the Internet, and it’s lack of rules, regulations, etc., and have run roughsod on brands and companies willing to play without rules, too. Keep in mind that the blame here lies on both sides … bloggers and marketers.

The blame is for adulterating the separation of paid placement (advertisement) and earned placement (public and media relations) that has always protected the public in traditional mediums. No one is technically doing anything legally wrong, but ethics comes into question. Bloggers aren’t traditional media members, aren’t typically trained journalists and are the first media members in history to play both the editorial and advertising sales roles without an official ethical deterrent from blurring those lines.

When a brand realizes there’s an influential writer (blogger) that doesn’t have the ethical boundaries of a traditional journalist and realizes for a few free products or chump change (to a brand), they can get the influential blogger to write about their product and get third-party endorsement, they jump on it. When unknowing blogger (mommy or otherwise) hears, “We’ll give you $2500 and a free vacation to write about our dish soap!” they think, “Shit … beats Google Adwords!”

Unfortunately, there are also a small number of the small number that have let the attention from brands go to their heads. They think they’re big shot influencers and can just push brands around. In reality, they’ve got nice blogs and good audiences, but very small, niche ones. They’re not the New York Times and acting like it makes them look like douchebags. Big brands are starting to learn who they are and avoid them. Dads (and new bloggers) need to learn from that.

Run your blog like a business. Respect your audience, but respect your advertisers as well. Try to maintain an ethical balance between what you write and who pays you. Fully disclose everything and be nice to people trying to do business with you.

Am I wrong?

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I have a piece of paper enumerating my Twitter strategy tacked to the bulletin board in my office. When I tell people about it and report what the paper says, they laugh. My Twitter strategy is pretty simple: Share Good Shit.

But it’s more than a Twitter strategy, it is, in my mind, the fundamental essence of becoming a socially connected business or person. It answers the puritanical call-to-action from social media advocates past. Give to get. Provide value.

I admire the panache and drive of social media consultants like Scott Stratten who set out to collect a lot of followers. He’s built a brand and a business behind doing so. I even applaud the not-so-smart but still collectors who have gamed the Twitterverse to amass tons of people following them. They may not have a purpose or a focus like Scott, Chris Brogan or others, but still have a veil of influence in the world, even if it is fragile and superficial.

People are often surprised when they find out I’ve only done one thing to collect my meager Twitter following: Share good shit. All of my followers are organic. Yes, I follow back, but never went out following random folks just to drive the numbers up. People follow me because I do one thing on Twitter pretty consistently: Share good shit.

Today, I’m starting something new with my sharing. I’m not changing the fact that I do share a lot on Twitter, but am adding a dimension to my sharing that I haven’t done in a while. Here, on this blog, every afternoon around 2:30 Eastern Time, an automated blog post will appear that aggregates the content I find worthy of sharing. Those links I share on Twitter will now be aggregated in a blog post as a reference point for you.

No, the process isn’t new, nor is it unique. People have been posting lists of their Delicious Bookmarks or Google Reader Shared Items automatically to their blogs for a long time. I even did it here once up on a time. I do have some philosophical issues with automated posts and think blog content should be more than just links, but here’s why I’m doing it:

Content Curation Is Valuable

If you aren’t on Twitter all day or think to jump over to my page, you can still see the content I’ve found and deem worthy of sharing (if that’s of value to you). Lots of people miss most of my Tweets. This is a nice way to say, “Don’t worry. You can always hit SME for the blog post that reviews the good stuff.”

Good Content Deserves More Than Traffic

By linking to these articles, pictures, posts and more, I’m giving each of them a little bit of Google juice. The inbound link from SME isn’t that of, say, the New York Times, but it counts for something and good content should be rewarded as many ways as possible.

The Technology Is Available

All I have to do is click “Share” in Google Reader and through the magic of the Shared Items WordPress Plug-in, you get a post with the good links all packaged up for your viewing pleasure whenever you like. I won’t break a sweat doing this and you’ll still benefit. It’s a win-win.

So, at 2:30 ET each day I share an item in Google Reader, you should see a post here on SME. It will be a collection of the good stuff I’ve found in my reading for the day. I hope you find them useful.

And if that’s not your thing, each post will begin with “Sharing Great Content …” with the date. Just ignore those and come back for the other content here.

Hopefully, you’ll enjoy the good shit I share this way, too.

(And substitute “stuff” if you’re easily offended. My guess is that if you are, you would have stopped reading me a long time ago.)

I’ve developed an addiction to a silly iPhone game called Block-Off. It’s one of those dumb block removal games where, if you find two or more blocks of the same color connected to one another, you tap them and they disappear, realigning the columns. The various opportunities to remove similar blocks, depending upon the arrangement, makes it difficult to “clear the board” which you naturally think is the ultimate performance.

But the more you play the game, the more you realize that clearing the board does little for you. Yes, you get a “Well Done!” pronouncement from the app and a few bonus points to your overall score (accumulated in various increments depending upon how many of each color you remove at a time), but clearing the board is not the point of the game.

Block-Off ranks its players by highest score, not tiles cleared. In order to be No. 1 on the list of high scores at the hardest level, you would need to accumulate a high score of about 120. But if you get a good layout to begin with and can maneuver so that you remove 10 or more of one color at once, you can score 120 or more but immediately lose the game because there are no more matching tiles adjacent to one another.

My son and I play the game against each other every so often. He tries to clear the board. I try to accumulate the highest score by arranging the board so I remove more consecutive colored blocks at once.

It occurred to me that social media measurement and social media ROI have essentially become a big game of Block-Off. Everyone is out there trying to accumulate the most Facebook fans, blog comments or e-newsletter subscribers. But none of those are the point. To make the high score list, you have to connect with the right audience, not the largest audience, then drive them to do become a customer.

Stop playing the game like my five-year-old. Think about what it takes to win, then go do it.

So, what does a win look like to you? The comments are yours.

I take my daughter Katie to Mommy-Day-Out preschool two days each week. Because there’s an hour and a half gap between dropping my son off at school and her drop-off time, we get to have breakfast and play a bit. Today, she wanted to play with the camera, too. So we did.

What can  you do to play today?

Would you like to be a regular blogger at Social Media Explorer? I’m taking suggestions (not applicants … it’s not a job) and nominees for smart thinkers, status-quo challengers, tool reviewers and people who understand social media marketing better be about business or you’ll be flipping burgers soon. I want to share this platform with thought fire-starters.

We are smarter than me.

But I’m going to be picky. I want people who are committed to teaching social media, blogging regularly, sharing their experiences and thoughtful opinions, helping others understand not just how to use social media but what it means to be social. I don’t want guest posts from PR hacks or desperate start-up junkies hocking their product or service. I want people who have some experience, have an audience or following of their own, or can show tons of smarts otherwise and understand the responsibility and value of sharing a platform with some meagre credibility.

I’d love to have different perspectives … an agency person, an entrepreneur, a business owner,  a wicked-smart business person who is a n00b to technology or social media. Perhaps even an analytics junkie, an email fiend, productivity enthusiast … even a gamer. Ideally, I’d love a lineup of 6-8 authors who can help keep the audience informed, entertained, but most certainly challenged with their thinking about social media, marketing, advertising, public relations and communications.

I am not going to stop blogging. This isn’t a cultural shift in Social Media Explorer or what it does. It’s an expansion of the resources to provide better content more frequently. It’s a call on my community to challenge the thinking: mine, yours and the echo chamber’s.

If you’re interested and meet the requirements (and don’t meet the bad ones) above, email me. Tell me why you’d like to write here, what you’d like to write about (think of it as your beat), what you think our readers will get out of your contributions and yeah, what you’ll get out of it, too. (If you need me to tell you why blogging here would be beneficial to you, then you probably won’t make the cut. Just sayin’.)

Understand that I may not pick you. I’m making room for a few, select folks. If the quality isn’t there, I owe it to this audience to not pick you. It’s not personal.

And you’re certainly welcome to not pick me, too. I’m only interested if you are.

Thanks for reading!

My friend Edward Boches had a crappy experience at a Marriott Hotel last week. Like any good content producer, he blogged about it. Social media more than any other communications mechanism before has done more for placing market control back in the hands of the consumer. The barrier to entry to the web is a pulse and scant brain waves. If you are moderately functional, you can publish.

Boches, who has far more brain waves than most of us, offered a fantastic suggestion to any business in his post. He saw through his frustration to offer up a customer bill of rights of sorts for Marriott. He suggested it look something like this:

1. We guarantee your satisfaction.

2. We guarantee your room will be clean and that everything works: the clock, TV, lamps, bathroom.

3. If for any reason your stay with us was unsatisfactory we will make it up with comparable accommodations on us.

4. We will take any complaint and suggestion seriously and respond as quickly as humanly possible.

5. We encourage you to Tweet, blog, and post images and video of anything you find below standards or unresolved.

Certainly, the customer bill of rights idea is noble. Many of us in the power-to-the-consumer world of social media immediately nodded and virtually high-fived Boches for the concept, even if it was less original and more a reminder of what companies should be doing.

When Boches got his response from Marriott and they offered apologies and explanations and engaged commentors on his original post, he followed up with a lessons learned kind of story. In it, he offered these thoughts for customers to keep in mind as a sort of quid pro quo for brands who grovel accordingly:

We should make our issues public.

It’s smarter to offer suggestions than criticism.

We should welcome any brand or individual who tries to learn and engage.

If we want brands to deliver better service, it’s partly our responsibility to guide them there and hold them to it.

And the congregation said, “Amen.” Right?

Maybe not.

While I’m certainly supportive of the idea that brand should treat their customers with the utmost care and respect, least they flee to hungry competitors or even to the interwebs to vent their frustrations with them, I think enumerating these ideas as requisites for the general consuming public is idyllic and naive. For every consummate professional out there (like Boches), there exists about 15 dipshits who will only bitch to bitch. Or bitch to get free stuff.

The customer is not always right. In fact, sometimes the customer is quite an asshole.

Should consumers hold brands to a higher standard? Yes. Should we unleash the huddled masses, trailer trash and mouth-breathers on Twitter and Facebook and blogs to whine about every misstep or oversight they encountered while buying Natty Light and Marlboro Light 100s at the Circle K? I’m thinking no. Half their problem is that they wouldn’t have hurt themselves stepping on the pop-top if they were wearing shoes, or were paying attention to where they stepped rather than yelling at their baby-daddy on the prepaid cell.

Yes, the portrait is exaggerated, but to illustrate a point. Not everyone is a civilized consumer. Not everyone plays fair. And this country is as mired in moany, bitchy negativity as it frankly needs to be, in my opinion.

Maybe I’m just having a bad week, but there’s a big difference is a polite blog post pointing out a bad consumer experience and a web full of Springer plots.

Thanks to Boches for opening the dialog. Thanks to Marriott for learning from the experience and participating in the conversation. But don’t we owe it to our sanity to establish some limits? Or is sufficient brain waves to figure out how to publish online enough?

A penny for your thoughts … unless you’re barefoot in public. The money would be better spend on footware. Heh.

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Karen Klein asked a tough question of me at Social Media Club Seattle last week. Karen is the CEO of SilverPlanet.com, a website focused on helping boomers and elders with aging products and services, particularly home facilities. She expressed an interest (past or present) in hiring a consultant to help with her company’s social media marketing. But, like many small business owners, non-profit organizations or recession conscious companies might agree, Karen seemed to say that consultants are often too expensive.

Her question was a good one:

Would you consider incentive-based pricing, so I could afford you?

(For the record, I’m paraphrasing. She offered some other context. I just simplified it for the sake of argument.)

Not really knowing how to answer and having never thought of the possibility before, I said that I would consider it because if I don’t perform, I should be held accountable for that. But I also said the problem arises that you’re getting my time and counsel, which is worth something whether the projects and programs we develop work or not. I also can’t pay my bills on the possibility your social media marketing programs work.

But the question is an interesting one to consider, social media notwithstanding.

Chris Brogan’s now infamous pricing post got people talking about what a national social media consultant charges for his time and services. Peter Shankman, another elite PR and social media expert even posted this flippant (but perfectly valid point) tweet recently:

I can certainly attest that being someone who has built his reputation on sharing knowledge through blogs, tweets, conference talks and even responding to the occasional email asks, there are lots of people who mistakenly think you’ll just counsel them for free all the time.

My typical approach is that I provide general opinions and observations on my blog, Twitter stream, Facebook Page and even direct communications (in-person, email, phone call, etc.) free of charge. If you ask my opinion, I can’t help but give it. But when you ask me to consider your specific business challenges, the meter is running. So I can sympathize with Shankman’s tweet, even if Kami Huyse thinks its egotistical.

But even that general, free advice comes with a catch: I don’t have enough hours in the day to only do that. My time is valuable and a 30-minute lunch or a 15-minute phone call do answer your question is probably 30- or 15-minutes I’m unable to bill. No disrespect and I don’t want to be rude, but by asking for my nice guy helpfulness, you’re costing me money. No, money isn’t all that drives me. But I have kids to feed, friends. That’s just life.

And please know: I recognize daily how blessed I am to be able to make a living doing what I’m doing. To take something I did as a hobby for years on my own time and turn it into a viable job is like winning the lottery in a lot of ways. If you can’t sympathize with someone who is constantly asked for free advice, “10 minutes to pick your brain” and friendly lunches that are all about what their business should be doing on Facebook, I’m sorry. It’s the perspective I have. Every time someone approaches me with their somewhat-of-an-imposition ask for free advice, I’m not earning money that puts food on the table for the three people who matter most to me. No offense, but I choose them.

The premise of Brogan, Shankman and other consultant’s business model is that you’re paying for their time. The price of that time varies by consultant based on their experience, availability, ego (yeah … that plays into it, too) and opportunity. I typically charge $200-250 per hour for my time. It’s far less than some consultants I would consider at a similar level of experience and ability. But I’ve also had PR and marketing folks hear my rate and laugh, saying no one should ever pay that for my efforts.

My hours are typically booked at least 60-90 days out, so I’m not sure others agree with them.

And no, I don’t charge people to go to lunch with me like others may. Perhaps I’m leaving money on the table. But I just think that’s a dick move. If you think they’re trying to milk you for advice, just say “no” and offer them an hour of consulting at your standard rate.

Being asked to price my services on performance alone is terribly problematic. While I agree that if I don’t deliver, you deserve some form of discount, restitution or break, it’s not only the social media marketing program I’m giving you. It’s my time, energy and expertise. And we are working together on it. I don’t just wrap it up and hand it to you.

Social media marketing also doesn’t exist in a vacuum. How are we to know the promotion to drive Facebook fans didn’t work because your media company placed the ads in the wrong venue or your oil well ‘sploded the day before the launch? (Hypothetically. I have not worked with BP.)

You don’t buy traditional media on performance alone, either. An ad in the New York Times costs a ton of money whether it compels people to buy your stuff or not. Sure, Pay-Per-Click advertising is a step closer to a more efficient system, but all you’re paying for is the click. The performance should be judged on the lead or purchase capture.

Yes, I sympathize with Karen and businesses in similar circumstances when it comes to paying consultants. Small businesses get the raw end of the deal when hiring social media help. For what they can afford, they typically get inexperience or a limited perspective. And yes, I think social media marketing consultants are generally overpriced … at least the good ones. But capitalism teaches us interesting things, like when the market is ripe, you charge more.

I want to see the world from the incentive-based perspective. It’s the only true measure of a vendor’s worth in many ways. But even with a ton of capital and even more balls, I’m not just charging for productivity or success. I’m charging for my time, experience and wisdom.

And isn’t that worth something?

Am I an egotistical prick or fair-minded capitalist? Would you resent it if I said “no” to your lunch invite? If you’re the person who has emailed five times, called 10 and DM’d me on Twitter everyday for a month would you clue in and realize I’m not going to give you constructive feedback on your strategic plan, “when I have a moment?”

I’m here for the whoopin’. The comments are yours.

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