I think at this point, social media has an abundance of opportunities for anybody (quite literally) to make money: PR, Ads, Media buyers, news makers, bloggers, tech people, designers, mgmt consultants, you name it.

Mainly because, (1) nobody has really defined/measure social media properly yet. (2) Companies, brands, organisations don't really know what to do with it – so they'll pay anybody that sounds smart. and (3) There's still a lot of hype out there. Thankfully, that's starting to recede (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jun/2...)

But once the dust settles when it's no longer new, exciting and cool), many people will be out of jobs. So, we have to ask ourselves – what will get me to the end of the funnel.

@Daniel like Ben said there’s lots of hype about social media now and lots of opportunities to make money off it. I think there’s nothing wrong with helping clients to get started in the right direction but I think agencies need another point of differentiation if social media is going to become regular media

@Shalabh I love the phrase ‘agency love’ LOL! Your idea of Stories is great and gels completely with social media–it’s about the conversation.

I have a secret to admit–I intentionally made the title and tone of this post provocative to make a little splash in this big pond. Blame it on reading Copyblogger too much. But I think it has worked because I’ve got lots of great feedback from you guys. I hope you subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed and come back again.

Cheers
Shalabh
http://www.chasingthestorm.com

Admittedly, I’m not a social media expert ‘yet’ (and I’d like a benchmark/scorecard/background experience to boot with that pls! & though categorizing myself at least as a ’specialist’ is good enough to say i do kinda specialize in some parts social media, warranted?:)) It’s still in the early ages (at least in M’sia?), as an aspiring social media Go-To-Guy who’s got to learn fa-a-ster than I can actually indulge in what’s like holding on to the seat of my pants in this Social Media world!

My take on being the Go-To-Guy, it’s simply a crazy passion cum common-sense business model that helps those who need it that matters and for as long as it matters to them. I’m not gonna catch myself ‘guilty’ walking and talking about it like an expert unless I’m constantly making those valuable mistakes and sharing the glory amongst my peers to help others if i do get ‘up’ there.

I probably see that as the safest approach to be a gold-nugget social media expert that out weights the sand-laden ‘experts’ (not till my hair turns white i hope) and just continue learning from the pros like you guys n gals!
My social media HalfCents:)

Social media may not be new, but the scale of work needed to manage the online perception of an advertisers’ brand will require the support of today’s social media gurus (and tomorrow’s traditional online agency suits). The right execution (with the right partners) will create the social CRM needed to compete in the future (http://bit.ly/Biws7).

What many marketers fail to do however, is to adapt the same template for digital marketing on social media – measuring their success on a specific set of performance indicators. At the very least, marketers should be able to measure the number of times their brand is mentioned on cyberspace, the context behind the mention, and determine on a scale whether it should be responded. As we speak, there are tools such as Tinker (http://www.tinker.com/) and Viralheat (http://www.viralheat.com/) which allows marketers (and agencies) to benchmark social chatter.

Cheeers,
Darren

Good article.