I was lucky enough to attend another wonderful Social Media Breakfast Ottawa this morning. The speaker was the entertaining Chris Greenfield of clever communications. He looked at the use of social media largely from an agency-client standpoint – very oriented in marketing and public relations. It was a great session and luckily Robin Browne of Conscious Images was in attendance with his digital recorder so I assume he’ll have a podcast of the talk up soon.

The discussion was lively and entertianing and it gave me a good opportunity to think a fair bit about the role of agencies in social media marketing and PR. More specifically, it got me wondering just how long agencies will have a role, at least in that realm.

A recurring theme (not just today but in general when talking about social media in companies and organizations) is that there are pretty much two types of client: those that “get it,” for lack of more nuanced term, and those that don’t. The latter don’t usually last long in the social sphere. They are the ones that create Facebook pages that go unmaintained or launch “viral” campaigns that never go viral. Agencies offer the best advice they can but if the client is unwilling to devote resources (both human and financial), eventually the relationship ends.

The former, though, are the social media success stories. The brands that do it right. But, more times than not, aren’t they also the brands that create an in-house social media team? Or, better yet, those that recognize that social media are really just tools and integrate them accordingly in their overall outreach strategies?

There’s a role for agencies in helping them get there, of course, but these very same agencies are the ones who (should) recognize that social media can’t work for an organization if they remain a tangential element. Just as you need a clear understanding of your audience, which media they favour and what the rules of engagement for each medium are, you also need people on the inside who understand the tools AND the organization.

Agencies have a pretty clear role in the traditional speheres. But a truly successful social media presence, by its very nature, requires the authenticity that only someone working on the inside can bring, no?

I realize that we are nowhere near the point in which every social media practitioner or vendor can simply bring in their shingle and take an inside job. The titular argument here is, of course, tongue in cheek. But I wonder how long it will take for the scales to tip? If agencies continue to preach the importance of authenticity and buy-in from their clients, at what point do these same clients bring the function in house where that authenticity actually means something?

Let’s hear from the agency types. What’s your long-term strategy in this niche?

Rather than recap the most recent Social Media Breakfast Ottawa from memory, I will just point you to Mel Gallant’s great post and stick instead with my take-away thoughts based on what was discussed.

I think the key theme of the day, the one that will be the most interesting to watch in 2009, is the breaking down of walls between the social media realm and the loosely-defined rest of the world.

I forget who it was who first cracked it on Twitter but someone echoed the notion that the public discovered comments on CBC news articles after the whole proroguing / coalition debate. I think this ties nicely with Joe Thornley and Ira Basen’s debate arising from the Canadian Institute Conference on Social Media.

For the longest time we would talk about new converts to the social media realm as though they’d crossed to our side – as though we were a closed society wherein the elders wore silken robes and each tweetup was started with a secret handshake and Stonecutters-esque drinking shanty.

This isn’t the case anymore. Social media is getting more mainstream. And I think we are quickly reaching a tipping point related to credibility.

Read past the rhetoric and bluster in Ira Basen’s email to Joe and you find many of the perfectly legitimate concerns of people who just aren’t that familiar with, well, Twitter in this case, but the same can be said for many of the media we love so much.

The instinct for a lot of us is to get a bit smug about their ignorance. As though we are somehow smarter and more evolved because we know how to livetweet. Self righteousness is a real problem in our communities but it’s more of a collective self righteousness so we’re rarely called on it.

I saw one comment on Twitter today that referred to this morning’s gathering as a lovefest and that’s absolutely true. Get a whack of us in one room, fill us with coffee and we can solve all the world’s problems with 20 characters to spare.

But if we continue to close ranks, to see ourselves as above the skeptics and late adopters, we’re going to shoot ourselves in the foot.

Had Joe ended things with his twitstream, or fired off an email reply full of the same sort of bravado that too often dominates internal discussions about ‘us vs. them,’ he would have reinforced Ira’s preconceived notions.

Instead he opened the discussion. He reached out, in a way, to a skeptic and tried to show Ira how the discussion can be improved with social tools, rather than just tell. Did it work? Hard to say. But huzzah for the attempt.

This isn’t to say I fully agree with Joe; that’s not the issue. I could write another post taking umbrage with what he had to say but the point is he didn’t close ranks. He invited Ira into the debate in an open forum and a good conversation was the result.

This is going to sound patronizing, I realize, but we have to be patient with those who aren’t as familiar with the tools we use every day. We all know people who are instantly skeptical of any new web tool (I blame MySpace, the bad backgrounds and shitty midi music can turn anyone off all things social); many of them have eventually come to be bigger advocates than we are.

As social media advocates it is incumbent upon us to, well, advocate. Show the benefits. Follow Joe’s example and reach out to people who don’t necessarily see the value of the tools we love. Will it work every time? Of course not. Not everyone will want to use Twitter and, frankly, not everyone should.

But, at the very least, maybe we can spread some understanding rather than gyrate to the soothing sounds of the echo chamber.

First and foremost, many big thanks to the awesome organizers of Social Media Breakfast Ottawa. The fourth installment went off wonderfully in the comfy confines of Gowlings’ downtown offices. Great panelists and a great topic led to, well, great discussion.

I and others tweeted before, during and after the event; if you weren’t there you can check out #smbottawa on Twitter Search for a good recap.

I won’t bother getting into the meat and potatoes of the discussion since I’m hardly an expert on the issues discussed. I will, however, add a bit of substance to a few of the comments I made about the format and overall direction of SMB Ottawa.

Firstly, I love that these events exist, are open to anyone and offered free of charge. There is always something to be learned when a group of enthusiasts come together to discuss shared passions. But SMB Ottawa is almost becoming a victim of its own success. Crossing the 100 person threshold means that spirited discussion is impossible. It’s too big for the dynamics of a small-group discussion to really take root.

Which is why the organizers should be commended for switching to the panel format for this one. I felt like those of us in attendance got to eavesdrop on a great converation about community (and this is particularly fitting for this topic – we had 3-5 per cent of the crowd doing the talking while the rest lurked about the room and listend, much like an online community!).

However, while there was some divergence in the answers provided by the panel, for the most part they agreed on trends and issues. This is not unexpected. The entire event is geared towards people with shared interests, I didn’t expect someone to sit on the panel and decry online communities. However, it may have been worth the effort to try to track down a skeptic. Those of us who dwell in the 2.0 realm are all guilty of thriving in an echo chamber – a reality check is always useful to keep us grounded or, at the very least, remind us what the ‘other side’ is saying so we can  be prepared to argue for our cause.

The other drawback to the format employed today was the ‘agree or disagree’ framework for the discussion. It was great in terms of drawing out comments from the panel, to be sure, but polling the audience seemed to me like a bit of a failed attempt at engaging the audience. Given that “it depends on the community” was the subtext of every answer from the panel, I don’t think there was much value in asking the audience if they agreed or disagreed with very high-level statements about community.

Is there a better way? Maybe not. Especially given the short timeframe for discussion at these events.

My last observation relates again to the scale of the event. And this is by no means a criticism of the SMB Ottawa folks. Indeed, the very fact that they can draw IT people, agency flacks and comms folk from every industry and trade is a testament to their efforts.

However, much like the Third Tuesday discussions I so enjoy, it’s tough to appeal to everyone.  Today’s panel was made up of three people who use online community as a business tool. They are selling products. I found what they had to say to be very interesting but I found myself wondering a few times how to relate their comments to my field. I don’t begrude the panellists or organizers, there certainly seemed to be a sizable chunk of the audience who come from the corporate sector too, but it left me wanting something more geared towards those of us in the non-profit, government and academic sectors.

UPDATE: As panellist Ian Skerrett rightly noted in the comments, I’m a tool (well, he didn’t say that, he just pointed out my oversight, I applied the tool label). The Eclipse Foundation is, in fact, a non-profit foundation.

Which brings me to phase two of this post.

Is there any interest in starting up a meetup/SMB type gathering for communicators and flacks who work specifically in the aforementioned sectors?  I don’t want to draw people away from SMB and Third Tuesday, of course, just to offer something to a smaller segment of the broader audience, those of us who are more worried about engaging a specific audience (be it membership or prospective students or whatever), less so about selling something.

Let me know in the comments or by emailing joe[at]joeboughner.ca and please send this to anyone else who might be interested.

I’ve been an in-house communications guy for a few years now.

*Murmurs of understanding, some of befuddlement.*

And sometimes I feel like I’m the only one, you know? I mean, I know I’m not. I know many companies and associations still have internal communications capacity, but it feels like the circles I’m running in are full of these agency types…

AND SCENE!

I know it was pretty dramatic but I want to assure my loyal readers that the preceeding transcript was indeed fictional. There is no support group for in-house comms guys’n'gals (at least not one I know of) nor do I really feel like I’m alone in this cruel, cruel world of PR.

But as I get set for another Social Media Breakfast, and as I ponder my availability for future Third Tuesdays, I can’t help but notice the colleagues I interact with online are almost all agency folk.

So is it me? Am I just mixing it up with the wrong crowd? Or is the voice of the in-house community sorely lacking? A cynic might suggest those of my ilk are too busy actually working (those agency types have so much free time!) but that can’t really be true…

… can it?

If anyone knows of some prolific Twitterers or bloggers who work on the inside but still talk about the industry at large, please leave a comment. I do hope I am just missing them somehow. But I feel like we’re losing the battle to those agency flacks.