The Buzz Bin went overseas to talk to Steve Bridger, a Social Media Consultant & Online Community Mentor at Sift, in Bristol, UK. He is also the owner of nfp 2.0, a blog dedicated to helping non-profits and social media work together for a common goal.

BB: Tell us about the Buzz Director posts?

SB: It’s funny how these things develop a life of their own on the web. Much of my work is with not-for-profits, and in November 2006 I began to work up the concept of a “buzz director” for people inside organizations who champion the use of social media to promote the cause (although I believe much can be transferred with relative ease to the corporate world).

BB: Why Buzz Director versus Community Manager?

SB: The Buzz Director role goes beyond that of community manager.
In the old online community world, I think the role of community managers was to build places for people to come and to then manage and facilitate their participation once they got there. I’ve had this role myself for a number of years, and see myself both as a kind of ‘conductor of the orchestra’ (very ‘light touch’) and an ‘advocate’ for moving the community to the heart of the host organization.

Things have changed, and it is becoming more and more important to understand how to use the whole web as part of your community strategy, rather than just your own corporate website… oh, and Google. A buzz director will identify clusters of people, wherever they are, who are already participating around brands and encouraging them through access and links rather than through building tools and managing their interactions.

The more traditional online communities with which I have been involved have tended to be ‘bolted on’ and linked to existing social structures and ways of doing things. It was quite costly and difficult to create online places, so they tended to be collective (’what’s in it for us’), rather than personal (’what’s in it for me’). You now need to be in many places at once.

A buzz director will move seamlessly back and forth through the ever-more porous outer membrane of organizations, going outside the organization online space to establish a its presence in other people’s spaces.

When I first began to play with the buzz director concept, one of the main drivers was that we might be able to confine ’silo-thinking’ to the dustbin of history once and for all. What many executives do not appreciate is that social media is like a two-way mirror, that reflects back on them, and demands a new way of working.

It goes without saying that a buzz director will ‘walk their talk,’ and blog to facilitate discussion and embed learning across program areas and / or departments.

BB: How do you think regular social media citizens react to corporate social media titles?

SB: Job titles don’t go to the heart of the issue: there’s something about organisational / business-orientated hierarchy that causes problems for ‘buzz director’ type people, and what they are trying to do.

Internally, most not-for-profits (and corporates?) look pretty much the same as they did a decade or more ago. Adding social media to existing ‘deep frozen’ structures will not give us the vehicles for action that we need in future.

But to answer the question, I’ve had a first pop at defining what a buzz director job description might look like but I’m not naive enough to think organizations will just embrace buzz directors (and what they stand for) into their networks without demanding some measure of oversight and control. But I do think there is a happy medium, perhaps a combination of ‘vision + participation’ that would make the role more palatable to naysayers.

I confess to having some second thoughts about the “[Buzz] Director” title, but I think it needs to be like that, otherwise we’re losing the organizational imperative that I am advocating.

As you hint in your question, buzz directors wouldn’t be alone; they would co-create targeted engagement strategies with appropriate colleagues, especially ’social reporters’ and ‘community technology stewards’, as well as brand ‘ambassadors’ beyond the four walls.

BB: What do you think the biggest challenge is facing business social media?

SB: There are many challenges, but I think the biggest is the perception that by simply adding social media to existing structures will give us the vehicles for (in the case of social change organizations) action that we need in future.

The result - a disconnect between what could be achieved and what actually happens through lack of Leadership 2.0. It’s mission critical that we get leaders who understand what’s happening. Some agile budgeting would be a start.

The most successful not-for-profits (brands) of the future will be those who “think from the outside in”, and who give up some control in return for greater reach.

As Stuart Henshall wrote recently, “You cannot talk about the future of the organization without addressing tools that every college student is immersed in, uses and manages their life and social interactions around.”

Organizations need to learn to distribute some trust, too… beyond the chosen few. Give a little slack. Bear with me for a moment: if you ask an astronaut (admittedly, this is something I haven’t done) what was the most frightening part of their mission, they will most likely respond: the launch, and the space walk. Of course, astronauts spend much of their training practicing spacewalks and working out the details before they launch. But what’s it like to walk in space? Truly liberating, so we’re told! Buzz directors take the earthly equivalent of spacewalks.

BB: What measurement tools do you use?

SB: I get an absurd kick from seeing my blogs “authority” creep up in Technorati, but it’s personal emails which demonstrate value do the business for me. For example, I received hundreds of testimonials in the 6 months I published afterwilma.info a citizen journalism blog which documented Cancún’s recovery from Hurricane Wilma in 2005 (makes a damn good PR 2.0 case study by the way).

The ROI of social media (and digital marketing in general) is something I’ve blogged about, although I bow to others doing great work in this evolving discipline, like Forrester Analyst, Jeremiah Owyang.

Although there are quite a few guys out there in the buzz metrics space, I’m unaware of anyone who has managed to effectively nail the people bit of the equation. The problem is that this requires some form of human assessment, which makes it both expensive and something that requires thought.

Measuring ‘engagement’ is like eating an elephant: it’s a big job and you’re not sure where to start.

I visualize a dashboard as a sort of ‘virtual’ mixing desk… with levers and buttons, dials, green and amber lights, a few scary red ones, a built-in early warning system. Basically, this ‘thing’ would be so cool that nobody will want to be without one. Not if you’re a buzz director, anyway.

BB: You haven’t been blogging much… Where are you engaging? Facebook, Twitter, etc?

SB: Well, I’ve been eating a bit of my own dog food and hanging out on Facebook. I guess I’ve been kind of micro-blogging over there. I’m a huge fan of Flickr (which I still believe is to Web 2.0, what Amazon was to Web 1.0), with the odd tweet here and there. I’ve been saving up some blogging stories though.

BB: What’s next for Steve Bridger?

SB: Funny you should ask that; a freelance career as a consultant beckons - with a few projects lined up to support not-for-profits navigate the challenges of this dynamic new environment.

Although I reckon we’re perhaps 12 - 18 months away from the real breakthrough, when the not-for-profit sector really gets ’social’, I’m excited at the prospect of plenty of continued experimentation and innovation in 2008 from among the pioneers.

Oh, and I’m making it my mission to find the buzz directors who might already be out there, and I’m keen to unearth a significant number of case studies, which are oddly still lacking.

But right now… I need a cup of tea.