Guest Post: A Top 10 Social Media League?

Alex Sass, Renegade Media

A company I deeply respect launches a new blog. Naturally, conversation flows about the challenges of presenting useful and interesting editorial to a market saturated with social media gurus. I only need to look at my Twitter account to see literally hundreds of self-proclaimed masters of this not-so-new art, each one ReTweeting the other. So we set ourselves a challenge - if forced to do so, without weeks of research, who would we select as the true ‘people to watch’ in the UK social media industry?

The task is harder than it first appears. We naturally lean towards clients, consultants and freelancers we have worked with in the past. As is the norm in digital marketing, a few faces seem to be known to everyone and their work gets recognised, but on closer inspection can this be a simple case of ‘he who shouts the loudest’? I know from my own experience that awards in this area are often handed to the nominee simply because they are one of few people whose names crop up frequently, or at least that used to be the case. As someone whose own birth into the social media world began with the launch of a networking platform, I was often, probably inaccurately, presented as a pioneer and name to note.

Chris Brogan

Ask around the table and anybody currently adding ‘social media’ to their CV will probably have read the words of Chris Brogan whose blog and public engagements lend considerable weight to his fame. You’ll probably also hear the name Gary Vaynerchuck or Tom Raftery, both of whom broadcast their thoughts to a vast audience through self generated social media channels. Just like in the world of natural search, once you’ve gained exposure, the world’s your oyster.

There’s no doubt that the legacy these people leave for newbies to absorb has tremendous value, but few of us who actually work in the day to day nitty-gritty of online brand and direct response campaigns will turn to them for inspiration. Not because they fail to inspire as pioneers, but because the very fact they are so ‘understood’ leaves little room for our invention.

So who do we turn to, us little island folk, when we want wise words over a few beers, deadlines looming and PowerPoints blank? There are a few people who spring to mind, perhaps purposely they are the younger generation, a local network for the UK who seem to not only ‘get it’ but are ‘rolling in it’ both in terms of their day to day work and hopefully their financial reward.

i level’s Alex Miller

The first name that I scribble down is Alex Miller. He’s the one behind Jam, the social media department of i-level. We all know who Alex is, we’ve probably all pitched against him. In recent weeks we’ve seen Alex rise even further up the visibility scale being promoted to head of creative activation, meaning he and his firm are going to be producing as well as driving. A little shudder runs through the backbone, knowing a number of small agencies rely on their daily business putting cogs on the machines for i-level. One wonders if any will survive under this new regime? None the less, the guy clearly knows his stuff, he has a knack for clarity and has invested wisely, both in people and prominence.

Robin Grant, We Are Social

Why not look further than the obvious agencies my friend suggests. There’s a number of independents out there that practice what they preach and seem to get it right every time. Robin Grant, MD of 2008 launch We Are Social appears to be one of those guys. His name has come up time and time again going back 14 or so years. We’ve seen him with various hats on — a blogger since 1997, innovator at Habbo, founding member of WOM UK and a frequent face at the IAB. His latest venture presents itself as a ‘conversation agency’ something we’d all like to say we are, but don’t have the guts.

Sophie Cox, Worldeka

Then again there are those who really do live this stuff, putting their own money where their mouth is, setting up a dot com and working for themselves. Sophie Cox is one of those. Part of a family team, she runs Worldeka. According to her Wiki, Worldeka is a “collaborative website designed to change the world. It’s aimed at helping charities, NGOs, activists and policy members to connect, share resources, communicate with their members and create cross organizational partnerships.” The sort of stuff that sounds great in the pub but rarely pans out in the real world of Monday to Friday. None the less, Sophie has the experience to pull this off, originally working in international business and marketing for Omnicon and boasting a T & T award amongst others to prove her point.

Richard Jones, founder of  Last.fm

If charity is a little too Noughties, how about music — Richard Jones has to be one to contend with. Founder of Last.fm, he took his track recommendation website from Southampton Uni, via Shoreditch to CBS pocketing £19m along the way. In fact he’s probably the sort of guy to use those funky shaped business cards, the one’s you get from Moo.com, a company that linked Flickr pictures to stickers to entertain us all in the board room. The company printed 10m social-media-business-cards last year under the watchful eye of founder Richard Morris. Both these two are awkwardly young and cashing in on their belief that collaborative entertainment equals big bucks.

Social networking clubs

If none of these names rings a bell, where would you go to tag a few faces? There are social media networking clubs springing up all over the world. Usually based roughly around the Ecademy concept of profiled individuals networking and presenting to each other in a digital-masonic-love-in. Personally I prefer a pint with the lads, but there are a number you’ve got to watch if only because your new recruits are probably attending them. Digitalks is spreading far and wide from humble beginnings in Gloucestershire (Rich Hudson being the man on the trigger) and Social Media Monday is doing the job in the city. Barry Furby is your guy for the Monday bash, channelling his 1100 or so members through a waiting list for each event and standing out as a bit of a social media celeb himself following a Daily Mail Young Entrepreneur token for his work at Fresh.

We could go on and on. For the sake of embarrassing the lads at I Spy, I won’t mention individual names, but there’s some hard core social media strategy flying around that Covent Garden loft. I recently took the best of the bunch for a little explore of our set-up near the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire and was hugely buzzed by finding that truly well thought out and justified strategies can exist between people both cross-agency and cross-country. It really is a people game, one that benefits from shared knowledge and open ideas, even if at the end of the day, we’ve all got our own rent to pay.

And the winner is…

So if I had to, who would I name as social media guy of the year so far? That one’s easy — Simon Tofield. Yes that same guy who makes the utterly infectious Flash animations about his cat. He’s clocked up 51 million views on YouTube to date.

One of the online films, Fly Guy, was the fifth most viewed UK video on YouTube in 2009. I know, I know, YouTube has little to do with deep level social media, but heck, look under the simplicity of his offer and you’ll see an agreement with United Agents and RDF Rights who are bubbling just under the surface to take this humungous social media viral and plaster it over every possible commercial channel. The first Simon’s Cat book entered the UK Bookseller Top 50, Amazon Top 20 and hit Play.com’s number one spot for all books. RDF announced this month that they were “extremely excited to be part of one of the most exciting properties on the market”. Bet they are. Meow.

Back to the task, that’s probably not ten and it’s certainly not a list or a league, but start here and the debate will flow. I’d contribute further, but I have a social media strategy to write, keywords to place and PageRanks to value. Has anyone else noticed that it’s near on impossible now to separate the process driven world of natural search and the wizardry of social media, even though the majority of companies we pitch to fail to see this? Perhaps the top spot on my list will shift to the future guy or girl that gets that one right.

Beer anyone? Bring your CV.

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