On the web, the battle rages on every time a example of paid content or expertise comes on the scene.

I’m not talking about sponsored posts or tweets – that’s a different argument that we’ll have to have another day.

I’m talking about projects like Third Tribe, or other membership-based learning communities. Or ebooks that aren’t free. Events, either live or on the web. Or time to consult, advise, speak, whatever.

There is a ton of information out on the web that’s free, and it’s given us a bit of an expectation that things we find on the internet shouldn’t cost us anything. But I just don’t understand the griping and whining that happens when someone decides to charge for their stuff.

There are three big reasons I pay for things, have charged money for my expertise and services, and think you have a right to try and do the same:

1. Experience Requires Investment

What you know didn’t get there by accident. Whether it was formal education or learning in the trenches, you paid for your education. You paid in time, in effort, perhaps in money. The stuff that’s in your head and the practical, tangible experience you’ve accumulated over the years. It all cost you something.

Employers pay for that expertise in the form of a salary. Audiences pay for books written by people who have detailed their experiences or knowledge. University tuition costs money. And you can argue all day long about how to determine the value of learning and how to filter out the good from the bad. But the fact remains that experience and knowledge can be worth money, and those that have it have reasons to put a pricetag on it.

2. Concreteness and Context are Valuable

Events cost money to produce. Curating ideas into organized information and content takes time and a certain amount of talent. Making a tangible product or executable services requires time, materials, and management. And doing the research to combine and present information or expertise through the lens of my business can be beneficial.

I’m also willing to pay for some filters to be applied, like knowing that my fellow community members have also invested money to be here, so we’ll all try and squeeze the most value from the experience and contribute in kind.

3. Mistakes Cost Money

Many times, I pay for someone’s expertise or knowledge because I’m paying for the mistakes they’ve already made. I’m buying shortcuts, to a degree. Perhaps they’ve already learned how to apply theoretical knowledge in my industry to a practical solution. Perhaps they’ve failed three times before the fourth time was a charm, and I’m getting the benefit of seeing those potential obstacles before I hit them myself.

Precedent isn’t always proof, but the value in a case study or experienced perspective is that it can help me better navigate the situation that *I* might be faced with, and benefit from someone else’s hands getting dirty first. I know that there are plenty of things I don’t know that I’ve gladly paid for so I can shorten my learning curve and add other people’s context and experience to my ideas.

Value is undoubtedly in the eye of the beholder. Only you can choose for yourself whether spending the money to learn something new is a good risk, and whether you’re likely to walk away better equipped than you were before. Sniffing out the snake oil is partially your job and the due diligence of a business weighing their potential investments. That’s been the truth since the days of hair tonic being hawked on the street in tents.

Don’t think you’re going to get your money’s worth? Don’t pay.

But just because a single endeavor might not be worth the money doesn’t mean that the idea of charging money for something is out of line.  And that means that MLM and “make money online” scams will abound – the opportunists have always existed. Bad apples don’t spoil the entire barrel.

Let’s remember that we live in a world of free enterprise, thank goodness.  And the good side: there will always be a great deal of valuable, helpful, and truly useful information, events, and people across the web that cost a few bucks to access.

We have to put filters on and do some homework. But having the opportunity to earn a living based on the knowledge you’ve built over your career and how you assemble, share, and apply it?

That’s more than okay with me.

3 Reasons Why Expertise Costs Money

You can’t deny that Gary Vaynerchuck has passion. I think it seriously just drips from him.

He’s got a video up on his site from a couple of years ago, talking about the need to highlight the good work and the good people out there. He kicked it over to me for consideration, rekindling the notion that we need to do more of this. It’s a simple message, but it matters. Here’s why.

The velocity of the web makes it so easy, fast, and inexpensive to spread information.

But the truth is that the bad stuff has always moved faster and farther (even before the web took the world by storm). It’s the whole “have to turn and look at the car wreck” thing. We thrive on controversy. Feed on others’ shortcomings. Feel empowered somehow when we sanctimoniously point out where people or businesses have gone wrong in our eyes.

I’ve felt and seen it a lot lately, and perhaps Gary was reading my mind or heard me say so. The rash of impatient, reactionary #FAIL declarations day in and day out. The social media lynch mobs. Entitlement and opportunism. Criticisms and “advice” that are not so constructive. Judgmental behavior and comments based on precious little context or information. And all of them wielded through easily accessible online channels, sometimes carelessly and without regard for the people on the other end.

I’m sure there’s some sociological or psychological pile of stuff about what makes us do that. But Gary’s trying to make sure we take time to do the opposite, and I’m glad. Because I need to put my money where my mouth is and rather than lamenting the existence of the bad stuff, I too can shift my perspective and shine a spotlight on the great examples.

There are promising organizations being built and fostered to do good with the technologies we’ve created.

There are displays of humanity, generosity, wit, humor, and smarts all over the place. I’m on the lucky end of lots of those folks, too. There are brilliant writers, helpful content creators, positive-minded businesses that are trying to improve the communities around them, whether virtual or concrete or both.

It would be really hard for me to draw up a list without excluding someone, so I’ll probably take a different approach that I’ll have to think about. But I hope you’ll mark your calendar for Good People Day on April 3rd, 2010 and do something to focus on the good people and ideas that surround you.

Whatever that means for you is great. Blog it, tweet it, podcast it, make a video. Or just pick up the phone and call someone and tell them they matter to you. I think that counts, too. If you publish it, tag it #GPD10 so folks can see it.

It sure can’t hurt to make a conscious effort to showcase the good stuff. We’ll always have more than enough evidence of the ugly side to go around.

You in?

image credit place light – flying not physically

Good People Day April 3rd: Refocusing on the Positive

Businesses that struggle the most with measuring social media are the ones that struggle with measurement, period.

Social media isn’t harder to measure than any other area of business. It’s harder to prove causality, but then again, direct and independent causality is awfully hard to prove for any singular event that impacts a sale. Sure, you can track your direct response codes all you want, but you can’t tell me definitively that the advertising you did, or the relationship that person had with Bob the Sales Guy, or the article than ran in the New York Times didn’t also have an effect on that eventual decision.

But I digress. Back to the point.

What Are You Measuring Now?

My sense is that if you’re a company that’s in a measurement frame of mind in the first place, you’ve managed to measure and quantify (or qualify) something that you’re doing. For instance:

• What’s the conversion rate of your e-newsletter subscribers to actual prospects or sales?
• What’s your resolution time on customer service calls?
• What’s the cost of having a human resources department?
• What percentage of your customers renew after the second purchase?
• How do you calculate your customer satisfaction, and what is it currently?
• What return do you get on your advertising dollars, direct or implied (and which is it)?
• How do you justify your investment in your IT department and infrastructure?
• What is your return on training materials or continuing education for your employees?

Guessing that the last two might have thrown you a bit, but these are legitimate measurements, too, aren’t they? We often term measurement as only having value when it relates to dollars in, but I’d venture to say that measuring (and justifying) dollars out is important. After all, if you know your stuff about the actual calculation of ROI, you’ll agree completely.

If, however, you don’t have an answer for anything above or anything that looks like those things, you probably need to improve the practice of your measurement to start with.

Measurement Needs Infrastructure

I’m going to put this simply. If you’re not already rigorously applying measurement (i.e. justification) standards to other areas of your business – on both the cost and revenue side – you can stop blustering about needing measurements for social media specifically. Why? Because you’re not equipped, and you don’t have a discipline of measurement upon which to build.

Measuring things properly takes, at least:

• Time: In terms of man hours to actually do the gathering of data and the further analysis of it, over a period of time that can actually provide context and account for trends and anomalies.
• Tools: The ability to capture, aggregate, and correlate the data you wish to measure, whether that’s a spreadsheet or a more complex software application.
• Humans: One metric alone means little. You need people to draw relationships and correlations between the data points that indicate progress toward the goals you’ve set. Few machines alone are capable of such insights and conclusions. Those people also need to report back their findings and offer recommendations for acting on them.

It’s staggering to see how many companies are demanding measurements and some mysterious definition of ROI for social media that can’t even tell you their conversion rate on various website properties, or the retention rate for their customers. Please stop demanding something you’re not prepared to do as a matter of business, and as a cop-out for not implementing a strategy that is unfamiliar to you.

Start With What You Know

You might think you need to develop and invent a whole new set of metrics to illustrate how social media impacts your business. Sometimes, that might be true or valuable, because there are things we can measure now that we couldn’t measure easily before. For example, I’m particularly bullish on the potential for metrics like Share of Conversation.

However, if measurement of the new stuff confounds you, start with what you know. Figure out how social media activities and participation impacts and influences the metrics you already use.

For instance, when you launch your blog, do your email newsletter subscriptions go up? If you know the average conversion rate of those subscribers (and perhaps their average value as a customer), you’ll be able to correlate the increase in your blog awareness to those subscriptions. Are they the only driver? No. Can you map the two together over time and see if they rise proportionally to demonstrate impact? Absolutely.

If your call center costs you $5 per incoming issue and you deploy a DIY YouTube help series or a Twitter team to triage in the social media realm, watch your daily call volume. Does it drop over a 30 day period in conjunction with those efforts? How much time and manpower does that Twitter team or video series cost you overall? Line up that investment against the drop in call volume by $5 per call, and see if you end up in the red or in the black.

It Doesn’t Have To Hurt

Measurement doesn’t have to be arduous and painful. It should be something you can stream into your daily or weekly processes. Remember that the goal isn’t the measurement itself, but the insights you get out of doing it. Keep it straightforward, simple, and utterly tied back to the goals you’ve set for yourself. (Start over here if you need help setting measurable objectives).

Make measurement a part of each department or function’s leadership. Put it in terms they’re familiar with. And at least to start with, measure social media against and along with the things you’re already tracking. See whether it has an impact either way.

And above all, be sure that you’re building a discipline of measurement and accountability in your business before you blame the medium itself for being immeasurable.

There’s loads of opportunity to evaluate your efforts, if it’s a mindset you’re willing to take.

Over to you. Agree? Disagree? I’m here to listen.

Wiring In Social Media Measurement