One of the common themes I see recurring in blog/websites articles are “How to use your blog to drive traffic”, “how to use twitter to engage your community”, and “how to use stumbeupon to bring you new RSS subscribers”. In some cases these posts do actually contain some useful nuggets of information, however as is more often the case, I see optimizers with no real experience doing little more than writing click enticing titles, without any real substance behind them.Recent books like Outliers have shown that it takes about 10,000 hours to develop a real expertise in an area, some studies have shown it takes about 10 years. In newer and emerging fields the time frame is less, but you still have to pay your dues. So when I read a post titles like “9 Ways your can explode your number of twitter followers” and I look at the persons profile, and see 320 followers, half of which are people like robert scoble auto follow bots, I wonder if they have any clue what they are talking about, or are just really good at building a network of reciprocating blind voting friend networks. That said there is some social media skill that’s required to build that type network, but as Sarah Lacy recently pointed out social media skills dont always translate into cash.
I understand shameless promotion is part of the gig, and I engage in it myself, but I do wonder how many people who claim to be social media experts, have any clue what they are doing. I recently wrote a post about Halo Media and Social Media at Webmaster World (subscribers only), and have to say it’s pretty big field. Just because you’re good a writing blog posts, and getting your stories lots of bookmarks, doesn’t mean you understand how to deploy widgets that build links (without violating search engine guidelines). You can read all the posts, from the biggest and most recognized experts in the field, but until you start to do it, stumble or fail and learn something, it’s pretty hard to claim any sort of expertise, outside of the purely theorhetical.
Lastly I’d like to address the topic of people who write, come up with, or suggest that there are “social media rules”, that should never be violated. To those people I’d like to say sorry, but the expertise you are spouting is just a bunch of hogwash. Are there best practices, sure for example I recently poste about how running a professional twitter profile is different from a personal one, but those are recomendations not rules. As long as you understand what happens when you “go against the grain” and it aligns with your long term goal, feel free to follow that route. Style is not what you do right but what you do wrong.
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{ 23 comments }
Social Media Expertise is within us all. Everyone are have the potential because “man is a social being”. All you need to do is bring it out from the inside.
“Rules are for the guidance of the wise and for the keeping of fools”
Not a big fan of the word ‘expert’ in any scenario. Even if you spend 10,000 hours working in a certain field, you can still be quite clueless without knowing it.
I piss a couple of times every day. Can I call myself a urine trajectory expert now? Bleh.
It does take a certain amount of hubris to claim full expertise, especially in such an evolving field. I do sometimes write about social media in my blog, but I think I spend far more time reading about it–I know I don’t have all the answers! No matter what our experience level I think it behooves us all to remember that there is always more to learn.
I’ve been giving this a lot of consideration. A charity I know of asked me for some social media help. I love to talk about the subject so I obliged. The person to be in charge of the campaign “wasn’t so good with computers” which as an understatement. She had set up a Facebook account and had started with Twitter. (she had heard something about it.)
When we finally sat down a week later, I was really amazed at the progress she had made. I don’t have 10K hours of social media, but I do have 10 years of marketing, PR, sales etc. experience and this woman was a natural at knowing what to do in the medium and just not knowing how to do it.
Long story short, with a brief explanation of the interaction of some social networking sites, she was off to the races. The moral? 10K hours can transfer from medium to medium with tremendous ease.
Troy
http://www.nibipedia.com
Michael,
I agree in the general sense that it takes a lot of experience to become an expert in any field. When it comes to social media, the expertise is really rooted in communications. The tools are evolving (Facebook, Twitter, etc…) but the premise of open dialogue about a brand is nothing new. A true expert in the field will have a track record of successfully communicating ideas to masses, but will also have the ability to be open minded and embrace new and quickly evolving tools.
Social Media is about:
Discussing Ideas With People In Communities
If you are an expert at facilitating and participating in discussions about ideas with people in communities AND are open to using new tools then I would consider you an expert in social media.
http://admaven.blogspot.com
The one question i often see omitted from any commentary on using Social Media/Sites in traffic/business building is: Does my product and/or services target demographic actually use any of these social networks? That one question can save many hours of frustration after the effort invested in SM becomes futile since your audience isn’t even in that theater.
I don’t even think he term “Social Media” is fully defined yet, so I’m not even sure what an expert in it is.
Amen! I couldn’t agree more!
I agree Michael – In fact anyone who’d call himself an “Expert”, let alone social media, is clearly a fake, atlest that’s what experience taught me. I’d say it’s a people’s term. If someone recommends me that Michael Gray is an SEO Expert, I’d take it. But not if you have it pasted on the blog title.
I think it’s the same case with social media experts.
Cheers!
Mani Karthik
http://www.dailyseoblog.com
Niels Bohr famously said that “An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”
It’s all blog vomit, isn’t it? You get a few field leaders and then hundreds of wannabes who regurgitate what they’ve read elsewhere, whether it works for them or not. If ANY of these fools were experts, they’re realise they were working in a severely overcrowded niche and they’d get out of it!
With an ever changing world, not to mention the dynamic webosphere- I don’t think anybody can ever claim to be an absolute authority in a given field. My thoughts stem from the simple fact that everything is always changing and evolving rapidly.
The knowledge of today is going to be obsolete or useless tomorrow. So……
Achieving a social following is different from niche to niche. I spend about 2-3hrs a week “socializing” online. Anymore, at least in the SEO field I think more would be a waste of my time.
A lot of social media people have short attention spans and ignore principle rules of marketing, one of which is measuring your return.
Social media is trial an error in my opinion. You try out a handful of techniques and you eventually find one that works well. Social media is not rocket science I think that is why there are so many ‘experts” out there.
Michael – what happens when you are the social media person for your company and you can’t “show off” all your numbers?
Well said – need more people telling how to do it with specifics and concrete examples.
Er…commenters #17, #18 and #19 are fine examples of the blog vomit I referred to earlier. Good lord, in a thread about social media experts, who name drops their blog instead of using their real name? It’s hardly *social* guys, is it?
Why don’t we do this:
Have a huge social media competition to see who can drive the most traffic to some random PR stunt. Then we can quantify EXACTLY who is an expert, who isn’t, and where everyone ranks.
Somehow, I believe at least 7 of the top 10 winners of that competition would be considered “nobodys” in the field of Social Media. And certainly not self-proclaimed experts.
Brad
I’ve been thinking about the terms “professional” and “expert” for the past couple of days. Mostly because I decided to start blogging about a new interest of mine — online marketing and blogging — and I have no real experience in either of these fields. So why would anyone listen to me? They won’t, and probably won’t give me the time of day until I’ve had a lot of experience.
The problem with that is, how do you gain the experience, without having the connections and reputation that an experienced party in the same field would have? Where do you begin?
Furthermore, I have been a top-ranking member on Digg, a Propeller/Netscape “scout”, and I still wouldn’t consider myself an expert on Social Media, but if I told you those things, would you assume that I was an expert?
Michael,
This is definitely a very interesting discussion and the answer depends on how you define an expert. You can find situations where experts are wrong, and someone who just has a natural understanding of a field provides a better solution. In a growing, new field like social media, I feel as though there cannot be experts as there hasn’t been enough experience with failure for someone to have a complete understanding of how social media works. There are undoubtedly leaders in the field, who have a better understanding of social media and how you should approach it in different situations.
Thanks,
Dave
AMEN! Michael, I am so sick of people jumping from one stupid buzzword to another while defining themselves as ‘experts’. First there were Web 2.0 experts. Then there were mobile marketing experts. Now there are ’social marketing’ experts. Blah.
Either you understand marketing and can use all these different niches effectively, or you can’t.
That was a great article.Thanks a lot
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