What Makes a Modern Marketing Professional, Professional (part 1)

The best part of this digital content era is that anyone can get involved with marketing their brand, business and/or service and have immediate, unfettered access to literally millions of people at any time of day or night. The worst part of this digital content era is- well, you probably know what I’m about to type next, but I’ll do it anyway- the worst part is that anyone can get involved with marketing their brand, business and/or service and have immediate, unfettered access to literally millions of people at any time of day or night. While our  Age of Access is the single greatest communication innovation in the history of mankind,  it’s also a time of seemingly endless quesitons:

• How do you know if the person you hired is a real marketer or a talented community manager?
• How do you know if you’re a real marketer?
• How do you differentiate between community managers, marketing novices and marketing pros?
• Can’t I just do most of this digital/social media stuff on my own?
• Why was a show a brilliant as Boss canceled?

No seriously, Boss is amazing!

Really, when it gets down to it, the main question is:

What makes a modern marketing professional, professional?

Hint: It’s not a classy tablet/smart phone/earbud holster…

This is the first of two articles on what makes a modern marketing professional, professional. Like any near infinitely varied and all-encompassing field, it’s extremely difficult to nail down one specific attribute, skill or trait that defines a “Professional Marketer.”  What’s far easier however, is compiling a list of ‘Must-Haves’ and ‘Who-Cares’ for the modern marketing arsenal. The next article will cover the Must-Haves. This article, however, is all about the Who-Cares, or rather, five aspects, traits and/or other assorted, related stuff of a modern marketer you shouldn’t care too much about, such as:

AGE

That, for those of you who don’t know, is a scene from the US version of The Office in which Creed Bratton dyes his hair ink-toner black in an (absolutely futile) attempt to look younger. I get it, the digital space is new and current and you may catch yourself becomming a casual agist, thinking that a few more miles on the meter means that the person (or yourself) is out of touch. This is absolutely NOT the case. While it may be true, that adoption rates of social media, digital content and other emerging tech trends are higher among certain younger demographics, the ability to market products, services and ideas has no limitation on age.  Consider this guy:

If you build/borrow/buy/steal it, they will come…

In case you sort of missed out on the past decade or so, that’s the late Steve Jobs, the fomer head of Apple. I’m not going to get into debates about his managerial style, but his skills as a brand cultivator and thought-leader are unquestionable. Steve was born in 1955, the iMac was released in 1998, when Jobs was the not-quite-spring-chicken age of 43. Three years after that he gave us the iPod (aka, the CD and Radio killer). Six years after that, the iphone changed the mobile landscape and yes, it was just yesterday (well, 2010 actually) that he gave us the iPad. Whether you love or hate Apple products, it’s clear that Apple marketing (which Jobs had an extremely heavy hand in guiding) was current, cutting edge and most importantly, effective. But don’t take it wrong, you don’t have to be an industry game-changer to be effective past your thirties, you just need to be good. That goes for any age. Consider Jim Nichols or Joseph Tripodi or Ahmed Khattak or….

Blog, Blog(s) and Subscriptions

NOT PICTURED: Expert Chefs

This may come as a shock, but what you’re reading right now are words that I’ve written based on thoughts I’ve formulated based on my years of experience, education and training (actually, that shouldn’t come as a shock at all, though if it does, perhaps you should consult someone). All that accounts for exactly nothing if I couldn’t back up my words with action (which I have done, will do, and are still doing right now). The old expression about talk being cheap, is as timeless as it is apt. Me writing a blog or blogs or even worse, simply “curating” a bunch of blogs from others has absolutely no bearing on my actual, individual ability as a marketer. It may give you some insights into my tastes, concepts and thought processes, but as far as whether or not I can get the job done, you’re better off talking to a Magic 8-Ball.

…because you already know what a Magic 8-Ball looks like…

Just as there are billions of images of food and twice as many food blogs, but not everyone who writes/reads a food blog is a culinary arts master, there are billions of marketing blogs being written by all types of marketers (and non-marketers). You need much more than a few hundred/thousand words to prove your merit as a marketing master. And please, don’t misconstrue not valid as sole evidence as not valid. There’s nothing wrong with writing/reading blogs, hell, it’s damned necessary to stay up to date on all the latest information in most fields, but simply writing or reading a ton of content does not make you a professional  at executing initiatives and producing results.

Event Attendance

Every festival, every convention, everywehere….

The thing about events is that they’re subjective. Some people consider attendance to SXSW Interactive mandatory every year. Others live and die by everything the AMA hosts. Some can’t not go to every networking meet & greet or local club/affiliation meetup. Some people don’t do any of that. The thing about it all though, is that while a strong network of colleagues and contemporaries is extremely valuable, spending literally thousands of dollars on airfare, hotel, registration fees and cash bars is not the mark of a marketing professional. Like blogs, it’s critical to get your name out there and establish strong bonds and healthy relationships with other marketers and potential clients, however, simply attending these events qualifies you as a marketing pro to the same extent that watching Doc McStuffins makes you a cardiologist.

Slightly less gritty than Boss, but still a brilliant program…

Being invited to present a keynote address, or contribute to a breakout session or panel however, is different. That is an indication that you did more than just fill out the paperwork, submit the fees and make it through airport security. I’ve received literally dozens of resumes and requests for referrals over the past few years, on which the person listed activities such as “attended the past four SXSW Interactives” or “went to Digital Marketing Meetup Happy Hour” or “sat in local TEDx and spoke to speaker afterwards” as a professional achievement, one person once listed the fact that they were in the audience at a conference where Larry Winget was speaking as an accomplishment. Those aren’t professional achievements, because they don’t have professional requirements. Really, have so many people not heard of Dictionary.com?

Gadgets

Just because you’re plugged in, doesn’t mean you haven’t checked out! Ooh, Burn!!!!

Some former colleagues and I used to refer to this as “New Shiny Syndrome.” Every so often, the leadership at the company  would read an article or see something in the news or hear about some new device/website/app from their kid/grandchild/neighbor/barista and come into meetings demanding we acquire said device/website/app and develop a strategy around it. Or worse, they wouldn’t consult us at all, and would go out and blow a bunch of money on some passing fad that they new would be the next big thing!

“iPhone? From Apple, the computer company? No, I think we should go with Palm Pilot phones. They’ve got longevity”- actual quote from a VP

Much like having a blog or attending conferences, by itself, this is no indicator of ability. Possessing the latest technology means nothing if you can’t deliver consistent, measurable results every time. Confession, I didn’t have an iPad until about six months ago or so. I had a Kindle Fire (1st gen, not an HD)with  the SplashTop app (still have and use it, actually). It was all I needed and I delivered on time, every time. I won’t lie, it was a lot of fun walking into meetings and seeing a bunch of people with iPads look at me with condescending disdain when I pulled out my KiFi. But when I presented the results and anlytical data of my campaigns, the expressions changed immediately. The tool doesn’t make the marketer, the marketer makes the most of the tool.

Advanced Degrees

Woo-hoo! We’re all guaranteed jobs now, right?….right?…hello?

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with an MBA or a Doctorate. On the contrary, get all the education you can, while you can, whenever you can. But just as events and blogs aren’t everything, neither are credentials. In a past blog, I talked about leading from the front. I opened that post with this line: “Leadership, particularly in digital content marketing and social media strategy, is rarely about title or position, it’s about skills…” The same goes for professional marketers. It’s not about how many initials come after your name, it’s about skills.

Jargon

“Aren’t words like ‘paradigm’ and ‘pro-active’ just words that stupid people use to sound smart?”                   -The Simpsons, Episode 4F12, : Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie

It’s not what you say it’s…no, it’s also what you say…

In order to proactively collabo-strate pan-strategic stickiness across the verticals we should synergize and utilize heavycore eBrandgelists and fanbassadors to ensure engagement with transmedia fecundity through the omnichannel swimlanes for t-shaped cultivation of our…SHUT UP!!!

Jargon is necessary at times,  certain acronyms and terminology is unique to certain fields and so it makes sense to use industry-specific shorthand, but then there are times when it goes overboard, when the jargon isn’t being used to make communication more efficient, but rather to make the user sound more knowledgeable than they are or to cover the fact that the user has no real information to express- as demonstrated masterfully in this clip from yet another brilliant television show, Hou$e of Lie$:

If you can’t communicate your marketing messaging/strategy/concepts to your clients, colleagues, superiors and so forth in a language that they understand, they’re not the problem. You are.

Social Followers

Internet Famous: like regular famous minus real value

Yep. I totally went there. Marketing is not, nor should it be a popularity contest among it’s professionals. Good marketers are such because they do good work. Good isn’t synonymous with recognition or widespread fame. Seeing a marketer that has tens or hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers is cool, because it has always been cool to be popular so when you see someone that’s seemingly popular, you naturally think it’s cool. But cool isn’t good. Cool isn’t bad either. Cool is just cool. A marketer needs to demonstrate how they can make your service, brand and/or company cool and popular, not necessarily themselves. Granted most marketers are in fact, marketers and as such are excellent at self-branding, but this again is not indicative of a skilled marketer. Consider this, if they had so many clients, would they still have as much time to self-promote? Maybe yes, maybe no, but either way, their ability to work digital content magic for others is what you’re looking for. Being skilled at acquiring social media followers is not as important as being able to create transferable, scalable and consistent results. My interns can build followings (even my retired, non-marketer parents can build followings), but it’s my professional colleagues and I that analyze the data, differentiate between engagement, passive, active and interactive habits, create the behavioral profiles and projection models to then execute the campaigns that have the most impact and assess the results and adjust for maximum ROI.

Granted these aren’t make or break skills, however, if as someone looking to hire a marketer (or as a marketer yourself) you need to find someway to gauge abilities, this list is a good beginning. Although bear in mind, it’s really about what works best for you. Next time, we’ll talk about the Must-Haves. Are there any Who-Cares skills or traits I left out? What do you consider Professional?