Social media success isn’t about marketing; it’s about passion for people and for what you do.

That’s the attitude VMware, Inc. is taking as it fields a force of elite evangelists it calls vExperts. VMware has anointed more than 1,000 members of its online communities “who were particularly engaged with their community and who had developed a substantial personal platform of influence,” according to an April post on the VMware blogs.  The company empowers these street-level gurus with tools and technology to become social advocates for the company and its products.

“We are not the only ones doing the social; we help them to do social,” said Eric Nielsen, director of social media & communities at VMware, in an interview on theCUBE from VMworld 2014.

While acknowledging that “Social [media] is like Powerpoint; everybody needs to learn it,” Nielsen said businesses shouldn’t think of social media tools as a marketing channel. “Worry about the love of the people and the marketing will follow.” he said.

With new tools hitting the market all the time, Nielsen said the real challenge for marketers is to pick and choose the right ones for their audience. Like DevOps, social media marketing is a continuous process of iteration and feedback, he remarked. The greatest challenge right now is to identify which channels need to be pulled together into a manageable presence across multiple platforms.

Metrics are important, but success in social media isn’t a function of numbers, Nielsen cautioned. It’s about being part of the conversation and having a genuine passion for what you are doing.

Watch the full interview with Eric Nielsen (17:29)