That’s all about to change.

I’ve spent at least a year in a complete blogging funk. And it’s not because I don’t have things I’d like to say. I most certainly do. The reason for the funk is that I’ve been having an internal battle between “what I should be doing” and “what I really love to do.” Luckily for me, what I really love to do is also what I’m really good at. And it’s not creating and defining marketing strategies.

First, some commentary. A troubling trend has emerged from the chaos of the social media boom. People who have no real marketing skills or training or any experience with business strategy are becoming “social media marketing” consultants, strategists and coaches based on a few factors that have nothing to do with successful marketing strategy. These new marketing “experts” fall into one of three categories.

• The Cheerleader
• The Successful Fool
• The Opportunist

The Cheerleader

You all know this social media marketing expert. He or she is the person who has no proven track record for building ANYTHING other than followers on a few popular social media sites. They equate this popularity with business success and can even teach others how to recreate their “success” in these online venues. They use anecdote and analogy to answer questions of ROI and they universally fail to be able to point to any quantifiable measures of business progress that contribute substantially to a company’s bottom line.

The Successful Fool

This social media marketing expert has a proven track record of past business success, but it has nothing to do with any marketing experience, least of which social media marketing. There is no proof that their journey is repeatable. They use an unintentional slight of hand to direct our attention to their past exploits as proof positive of future benefit. And they make the foolish mistake of thinking their personal ability to grow a business can be transferred to others on a large scale.

The Opportunist

This is my least favorite form of new age social media marketing expert. They promise big results with almost no effort. They are the social media marketing snake oil salesmen. They’re the ones telling you that if you don’t do x and y you will be extinct in 2 years. Their success is measured in the number of people they dupe into buying their placebos. They’re not marketing strategists, they’re carnival barkers.

So what am I?

I have been very successful in my business life. Let me be clear, by “very successful” I mean that my companies have made solid profits for many years. But they have not been successful because I am a marketing strategy expert. Quite to the contrary.

What has helped make them successful is hiring great strategy consultants and partnering with great strategic thinkers, like Bill Leider. I’ve have also tried to align myself with others who are great marketing and brand strategists in specific market segments, like Marc Davison in real estate. But I am NOT a marketing strategist. What I do is work WITH and BESIDE marketing strategists to develop tools, tactics and technology paths that make executing those strategies simpler and easier. I look at a company’s objectives and devise ways to use technology to make executing those strategies more efficient and effective. I am a tactical strategist and a technology strategist. I am not a marketing strategist – social media or otherwise.

The mistake I’ve made over the past year is thinking that I needed to be something else. I don’t.

When Hal Lublin related the story of how, while playing poker, Chris Brogan helped him understand that he shouldn’t hold back, I wondered why I was holding back. I wondered what was keeping me from writing. And I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no one good reason. There is just one bad reason – I’ve been resisting being seen as a social media MARKETING expert.

My Master’s degree is in School Psychology with a focus on behavior modification. I spent several years creating behavior modification plans for severely mentally handicapped and criminally insane patients. So, if sometimes I want to write about behavior, I should. I have a passion for science, so sometimes I want to write about technology, the Internet and social media as it relates to quantum mechanics and complex adaptive systems. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t. I’ve also spent a great deal of time dissecting, with the help of some great thinkers, the role of vision and values in building and managing a business and solidifying a brand. I should write about that too. I will.

But what I will not do is continue to allow my resistance to being lumped into the category of “social media marketing expert” keep me from writing about areas in which I excel. I’m going to write about emerging digital tools and how to make them work to the benefit of strategy – personal, brand, marketing or otherwise. I’m going to write about what I love – technology.

Taking the experts’ advice.

The social media marketing experts I admire tell me that if I want to increase engagement, I should ask a question at the end of each blog post. Let’s see if they’re right. What barriers are holding you back from being more effective in using social media?

Two weeks ago I made Feedly the home page for Firefox on my desktop computer. I did it after going through a few sites I hadn’t visited in a while. It was an experiment of sorts. I’d given up on my Google Reader long ago in favor of human aggregation via my social networks. I wanted to see if it would bring some value back to the RSS feeds I had subscribed to in the past. It did.

Feedly’s design changed my behavior. Good or bad, design influences our behavior. The noise of the Google Reader format influenced my decision to give it up almost as much as the value of the social recommendations I migrated toward. The clean, magazine-style design of Feedly has cut out the noise and allowed me to get to more information faster, moving me back toward my targeted material. That’s a good thing.

If you’ve never given Feedly a try, I think it’s worth setting up an account and seeing how it impacts your own behavior. Here’s a quick video to illustrate my thoughts. If you’ve given Feedly a try, what are your thoughts?

Related reading: 5 Reasons Why RSS Readers Still Rock

Last night my wife and I finished up our Christmas shopping. It was fun. We were alone… no kids. It felt just like a real date. From the time we left the house, around 6pm until we decided to get some hot chocolate at Starbucks around 10pm, I was never once tempted to let the world know where we were. The lure of Foursquare points was not enough of an incentive to make me want to check-in at Toys”R”Us or Sports Chalet. I simply didn’t care if the rest of the world knew where we were.

But I did need to find a different a specific gift. So, I fired up the Maps application on my iPhone and typed in “sporting goods.” My iPhone knew my location and quickly populated the screen with cute little stick pins. I clicked the one closest to me, a Big 5, then clicked on the phone number so I could ask if they had what we were looking for. They did. At that moment, I was very happy my iPhone knew exactly where we were. And equally happy nobody else did.

Truth be told, I’ve been forcing myself to use things like Brightkite, Foursquare and Gowalla. Perhaps if I lived a more exciting life I’d feel differently. But I don’t. When I was in San Francisco a few weeks ago, I felt certain that when I checked in somewhere that there was the potential for a friend to be close enough to quickly jump in a cab and join me. It feels the same way when I’m at a conference. The popularity of a specific tool among the people I want to hang out with makes it really easy to locate the parties.

But I live my every day life in Santa Clarita, CA, and my business is not location specific. On a typical day, I rarely venture outside a 300 yard radius of my front door. And If I do end up going somewhere, it’s not usually very exciting. I’m the mayor of a Chevron for goodness sakes. Yay me.

When we arrived at Starbucks, I pulled my iPhone out and noticed several Twext.me updates. So, I read them, without actually going to Twitter. When I closed Messages down, there, staring at me on my home screen were the pretty little Brightkite, Foursquare and Gowalla icons. I thought, “why not.” So I fired up the one I like best, Gowalla, and let the world know I was having some hot chocolate with my wife. At that point in the evening, I wouldn’t have minded if someone we knew saw it and came by to say hi. But I didn’t really believe that would happen. Not in Santa Clarita. And I didn’t really believe anyone would or should care.

So, that makes me wonder. I wonder how many others are like me? I wonder if the technorati’s use of Foursquare will really translate to the general population? I understand that the tech community is madly in love with the potential of these apps, but when it comes to everyday use, my wife thinks they’re all stupid and dangerous, especially for a woman. She doesn’t even want me to know where she’s at most of the time, let alone the rest of world.  I wonder how many people are just like her?

Are you?

Plancast is built around a simple concept – tell the world what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it. Others who subscribe to your Plancast feed can see your plans decide to let the world know they’re joining you. Owyang calls this “The Intention Web.” A typical update looks like this.

That’s great. I imagine this is the perfect example of how the creators of Plancast.com intended it to be used. However, within moments of signing up on the site back on December 4, I received this plancast:

Last time I checked a blog post that didn’t qualify as a plan to do something, somewhere. My first reaction was a silent giggle. “Typical” was my thought.  That update is an obvious attempt to force a sales message into a platform that wasn’t designed for that kind of message. So, “for now Plancast.com is pure of marketers” made me giggle a little bit too. The marketers may not be there, Jeremiah, but the marketing behaviors are.

That said, I’m not at all worried that this kind of behavior will pollute the Plancast.com community, whatever that ends up looking like. The “force my sales message” way of using the site will either be rewarded or punished. Our cumulative reactions will determine whether it is accepted or rejected. No one person gets to decide. That’s the beauty of social networks. They are self organizing. It will be interesting to see which behaviors become accepted and which do not.

Where will the value lie? For me, Plancast.com has value only if it can help me easily and quickly understand where the people I want to connect with are going to be. It would certainly help me decide if a specific event is worth my time. That’s valuable. However, if it becomes a site peppered with links to blog posts, and messages about what people are doing at their desks, I have no use for it.

What are your thoughts?