By now, with several bubbles in our recent past, shouldn’t we expect more of ourselves than accepting zombification based on our tools of choice or convenience?  Recent experience would say we don’t.

The room erupted with gasps, groans, objections and expostulations.  All this because of a simple question from Nicholas (@communityczar):  “Do you believe that people will increasingly recognize and filter out the tweets originating from automated tools, rejecting them on the basis that they’re not authentic?”  The dismay at the idea was nearly palpable and came from nearly everyone BUT the thought leaders in the room.  They mostly nodded thoughtfully while the outbursts reached a crescendo then gradually subsided.

All this took place at the Sacramento chapter meeting of the Social Media Club, where the ostensible topic was “Social Media ROI: Is it Measurable?”.  The meeting got my attention by promising to address the topic “…Why new media may call for new methods of measurement.”  With the continued focus on Social as the now big thing I was curious to learn just what these new forms of measurement are and how they’d be applied.

Instead there was some initial dismissal of existing metrics (“Don’t even TALK to me about page views.”) and lip service of the idea that standard forms of measurement didn’t ‘exactly’ match up to ROI for social.  But when the rubber met the road it was clear that there was not much being used beside Google Analytics and, maybe, a smattering of RADIAN6.  Don’t get me wrong, sometimes ya gotta use what ya got, but in this context the emperor was obviously buck naked.

Then came the outburst above.  Dedication to a tool brings to mind the old adage ‘When the only tool you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.’  The concept that the consumers could gain intelligence and recognition of accepted automation tools and ignore that content by choice was clearly daunting and intimidating; rejected out of hand.  It was as if, having found a tool that does some useful things, figuring it out and depending upon it to reduce or at least shift the workload created a comfort zone, people didn’t want to hear about looming obsolescence.  Tool blindness should be a cardinal sin in the rapidly expanding landscape of Social Media Tools.  Conversely we should all be ready to accept and adapt ahead of the curve of consumer awareness.

In his recent article ‘I Will Never Hire A “Social Media Expert” And Neither Should You‘ (recommended reading here), Peter Shankman describes the fallacy of people focused solely on Social Media.  Essentially he says, and I agree, that Social is only one tool, albeit a new and shiny one, in the bag of the professional Marketer.  Further, if you’re doing ‘Social for Socials sake’ and NOT focusing on making money as the outcome then you’re likely to be “…a freaking idiot who’d be out of business in six months.”

So in the tweeted words of @royatkinson “Hire a carpenter, not a ‘hammer expert.”!  To which I’d add, if you find yourself becoming tool oriented it’s time to take off the blinders, recognize that all tools have limits and embrace the fact that we’re all on a steep learning curve.  And that noise behind you but getting closer?  That’s your customers catching up, always.  The safety of ROI remaining obscure will vanish sometime soon.  Whatcha gonna do?

(Tip of the hat btw to Roy Atkinson for the RT of the referenced article.  Roy is a wealth of information on his own as well as passing on juicy content.)