There are two things that I fear greatly when it comes to social media marketing.

The first is the random story on social networking or something in Newsweek or a similar mainstream publication that triggers a batch of “We gots to gets us one of those” reactions by people who don’t know what their approach or goals are going to be.

The second is an attitude that looks down on blogs as a source of industry trends. That’s caused, I guess, by a belief that the people who are actually going out and doing stuff know less about the industry and the tools than the people who just write about it.

All that being said, if there’s a better mainstream outlet writer covering the social media beat than Brian Morrisey at AdWeek I’d like to hear who it is. He’s got two…I’ll just say it…seminal pieces that I wanted to direct you to.

The first, Conversation Quotient, talks about the difficulty in measuring social media marketing efforts. The second is Flights of Fancy? that hits on the same point I tried to earlier, that these sorts of strategies and campaigns have the potential to live far beyond their expiration date because of social media’s high search engine relevancy.

Part of what’s informing Morrisey’s writing is likely the fact that he’s doing it as well, interacting with everyone on Twitter and such. That’s something I recommend to all journalists so that they can become more deeply ingrained in the community they’re covering, something that not only makes their coverage better but also deepens relationships, resulting in more likely linkage back to their pieces. It’s good for everyone.

So check out Brian’s stuff. And keep coming back to see what more he puts out there for discussion.