We need more social media experts
There are all sorts of anti-expert memes on the web right now, decrying the so-called crop of social media “experts” who want to pontificate onto the world about the wonders and joys of the social web.
Social media is about as opaque a term as you can get and yet, there are still gobs of people on the outside looking in. Clearly we have a lot of work to do.
We need more experts.
We don’t get upset when people call themselves lawn care professionals or plumbers or dog walkers. We need more of them too, in some communities more than others.
Social media expert, town crier, blogsmith or whatever your title de jour is…we need more of you. Because lots of folks are simply not aware of how fast the media is shifting and the flow of information traffic is going against the flow of those who are leading us. People want to stay plugged in and there are tools for that. Does it take time? Sure, it does. No such thing as a free lunch.
But how do you distinguish the experts from the pretenders who know nothing?
Do your research? Talk to other references? I’m always annoyed by people who are experts who don’t have as much as a blog or a web site or a twitter account. Facebook is fine, if that’s all you’ve got. But something that gives someone an ability to evaluate your competence. If someone chooses to hire someone with none of those things? Maybe that’s what they need and it’ll create more work for the experts who get it and do the job right.
One of the things that’s been astounding to me over the past year is how little decision makers know about the social web. It’s easy not to know, too. Being on the web is akin to having a glass on the wall to try to listen in on what others are saying. Only, there are tools that you can use to start your own conversations and to listen to other ones. It’s not eavesdropping, it’s information sharing and fact gathering in a fast-paced environment. It’s a bar that never closes and a well that never dries.
There are always hucksters trying to make a fast buck on the backs of unsuspecting people in the field, it’s a fact of life and it won’t ever stop. But we can’t – and shouldn’t – try to intentionally limit the field of voices. The cream will rise and folks will find niches and opportunities to thrive and provide value to the people around them who need it.
The hubris involved in calling yourself an expert takes courage, even for a fraudster. Eventually, you’re going to be exposed. The more people who get it, joining the ranks — to learn, to grow and educate others — are going to create choices and opportunities for people who want them and need them.
We need more experts.
Reading, Writing and Big Ideas is a blog by Ron Bronson about higher education, web strategy and life in the millennial workplace. Subscribe to the blog via RSS or email.
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03/02/2009
17 responses to We need more social media experts
Very provocative – in a good way. Not sure I agree with you on all points, but…that’s the point, right?
Meanwhile, there’s an interesting look at influence, trust and expertise in online tools right here: http://mashable.com/2009/03/02/measuring-online-influence/
It relates to this idea of who has influence. One reason I hesitate to agree with you 100% is that in the land of the blind the one-eyed “expert” is king. People who are new to the field can’t tell the difference between someone who understand the tools and someone merely claims to, because we’re not measuring results. I can tell whether you know how to walk a dog, care for my lawn, or repipe my house. The state of those arts hasn’t changed very rapidly over the decades. But social media is morphing every day. The more I think about it, the less I believe there are any experts. Yet.
Thanks Andy. I’m trying!
There will never be experts in the sense that we’ll have knowers who get it all, who know all and who endow their knowledge on others. I mean, do we have scientists who know EVERYTHING about science? Journalists who ALWAYS get the scoop? Nope. I think that’s the trick here. Realizing that experts are like currency and you can only use something in the particular area where you got it, to do very specific things. Sometimes, it’ll be a transaction that works for you. Other times, it won’t.
Hucksters exist in every industry. I mean, how many great car salesman get a bad rap because of some loser who sold their daddy a lemon? I don’t think we ought to paint such a broad brush on the term expert? So many of us who talk about this stuff are talking to the CHOIR about it. We’re preaching to teach other about the industry, about our craft and then we get mad and say “you’re not doing it right. Listen to Chris Brogan or someone else…they’re the real experts and you’re a pretender!”
But that’s just not true. I learn tons of things when I read the blogs of the thought leaders. Part of what makes them effective, is that they talk to lots of people. They get exposed to ideas, they get challenged and folks are helping them hone their craft constantly.
A lot of us on the ground floor have similar experiences, but our audiences don’t seek us out. We go to them and offer them this great font of knowledge of which they might be skeptical and even SCARED of. They expect us to break it down and to help them get somewhere.
Some get it. Others don’t. But I think that expert is really just relative to the places we use it. We don’t call 1st year teachers “babies” and teachers with 20 years of experience “experts.” We simply call them teachers.
Social media experts are the same way. Now like anything, we have bad ones and good ones. But the more that we have out there who are learning, growing and teaching others, the better it is for all of us.
So that was the premise of this article.
And believe it or not, it didn’t start that way…I actually started writing about hucksters and how they make it bad, but then I decided to challenge myself to look at it a different way and surprised myself in the process!
[...] Ron Bronson scores full points with his article dedicated to the need for more instead of fewer social media experts. Experts and not “hucksters trying to make a fast buck on the backs of unsuspecting people in the field.” Be sure to read the entire article, We need more social media experts, as this is only an excerpt: Social media expert, town crier, blogsmith or whatever your title de jour is…we need more of you. Because lots of folks are simply not aware of how fast the media is shifting and the flow of information traffic is going against the flow of those who are leading us. People want to stay plugged in and there are tools for that. Does it take time? Sure, it does. No such thing as a free lunch. Related PostsOnline Social Media Marketing is a MustFollowing Inside PR Closely With HumourPR Firms Hunting For Social Media GuruDigg Gaming DiggSocial Media Promotes Your BusinessYou Can’t Advise Clients on Social Media if You’re Not on Facebook and TwitterThe Social Network Business Plan by David SilverBeth Kanter: Non-Profit Social Media Coachlinks for 2009-01-17Questions of Gender Divide, New Media Barrier Breaking, and What About Podcasting and Vlogging? [...]
Beware the expert.
Putting the “expert” label on someone is kind of like calling someone “famous.” Being a former newspaper reporter, I always fall back on something from the old UPI Stylebook. (The AP Stylebook, while the standard in newsrooms everywhere, didn’t have the same sense of humor as UPI. But UPI is all but dead these days, so that tells you how far a sense of humor can take you in the news business.)
Anyway, the old UPI Stylebook had an entry for “famous” that went something like this: “If you have to call someone ‘famous,’ they’re probably not.”
I think the same thing goes for “expert.” If someone has to call himself or herself an “expert,” then I’m suspicious. But if the person gets third-party validation from a credible source — if Andy Shaindlin writes about “marketing expert Seth Godin,” and Andy Shaindlin is a trustworthy source (I think he is) — then I’m more likely to believe that this Seth character very well could be an expert in marketing. But Andy just calls Seth Godin Seth Godin (here), because most of the readers of Andy’s blog already know that Godin is an expert.
Thanks for the post. Expertly written.
Sincerely,
Andrew Careaga
Social Media Evangelist to the Stars
Ron, I agree with the spirit of your post, though I disagree about some of the details. My concern is about how easy it is to assume the mantle of “expert.” I’ve encountered plenty of self-styled on campuses “experts” who didn’t have much of a clue about what they were talking about but who were self-confident enough in their ignorance that they could put up a good argument about nothing.
A larger point, though, is that we need more discussion about social media, not just at grass roots but at higher levels. I’d like to see more senior leaders focus on results and ROI rather than magic bullets, and I’m concerned about too much enthusiasm leading to magic bullet thinking (can anyone say “Second Life?” Does anyone even remember it?). We need more experiments, more doing, more commitments. That’s how we’ll grow “experts”–when more people get involved and make a commitment to understanding over time.
@ Andrew: I actually agree with you on the term expert. But there are few words that really get folks in a tizzy like the word “expert.” I need to blog about it more often. Look @ what it does for my traffic!
@ Michael: I’m with you on the self-professed expert. I run into them all of the time, since I’ve not reached the “name-brand” higher education institutions as a student. So the hucksters run rampant on these campuses, selling their wares to unsuspecting people. But the thing about the so-called “expert” is that, they exist all over the place. We find them building web sites or doing other technological things. There’s no industry standard and so, I guess I’m saying that we need to rail against them, but self-certifying more people as folks who “get it.” How we go about that is anyone’s guess.
But I tend to think that the cream will rise and the leads to the folks who are trying to pull the wool over our eyes being exposed, because we’ll educate people enough to know better than to be defrauded.
Thanks for the feedback digital senseis!
Ron – I think we should all just call ourselves “evangelists.” Can I get an amen?
The guy who cuts my grass IS a lawn care expert. He’s done it more times this week than I have in a lifetime.
So what if he’s only been in business for 3 months.
So little of what any of us do is “social media” (using my definition of “user generated and commented media”).. and “Web 2.0″ is even worse.. BUT WE HAVE TO CALL IT SOMETHING
The guy who opened a Twitter account last month, has been blogging for a year, and has a web site is way out in front of most of the population.
Time has little to do with it.. there are some people I know from online in the 1980′s who still call themselves beginners when it comes to understanding how the net works
Since the tools are easy to learn, it’s better to focus on who is PROFESSIONAL and who has the business experience.. and thanks to the transparency of today’s services.. we can find that out faster than ever.
I prefer to do business with people I know, like, and trust. A profile on one site doesn’t do that.. but they do help us speed up finding out.
You are correct sir!
I am amazed at how many people I have spoken with who would rather take the comedian’s word for “Twitter” than realize how powerful a tool it is for marketing. And these people are in business!!
Web 2.0 is so leading edge that you’re right, we may as well share our expertise. Experts, Scouts, Evangelists too!!
I’ll do my part.
Thanks,
Kevin
Why do they have to be called experts?
I went to law school for three years, but I’m not a corporate law “expert”
Lets just quantify the term “expert”- does it mean they have spent 10,000+ hours studying SEO and related materials? Yeah, I would say that qualifies someone as an expert.
Or maybe, if someone can charge over $250 per hour for their services- that would also qualify someone as an expert. But not if they simply have a blog and know how to use twitter.
There is currently no standard for what “expert” means- and there should be.
@ Andrew Careaga – Amen! Or I also like “Advocate” or “Social Monkey”…
Agreed that there is a huge education to be done related to how much social media can be used in businesses and things are moving so fast that there is indeed a need for more people to practice and experiment.
One thing I would add is that expert should spend more time in transmitting knowledge about what works, standardize a little bit on practices when experiment prove valuable.
This is a mandatory step for social media to scale.
Thanks
We don’t need more social media experts, God knows there are enough self-proclaimed gurus. What we need are social marketing professionals; Marketing professionals whether they be client side or agency. It’s time to get out out of the test budget phase and into the business of social media.
Money talks and brands like Skittles that venture out and put their money where their marketing mouth is will lead social marketing into the digital mainstream. That is when social media experts theories actually reach the consumer. Give Masterfoods credit. I suspect that three or four more of these actual efforts by national brands will do more to move the business of social marketing forward than a mountain of experts with no client assignments or actual moneny to spend.
Let the brands lead and watch closely how the consumer responds…with an actual purchase. The purpose of marketing, messaging, advertising is to sell a product. Experts have a lot to learn from reality.
I don’t know if I am brave enough to call myself an expert, but I would certainly call myself a social media enthusiast. I’ve been in web development for over 10 years and working with forms of social media back since the BBS age. I’m quite interested in the phenomenon that makes certain social media tools like Facebook and YouTube explode and other fizzle out.
I work at a college in Alberta Canada as the Web Services Manager – from the administrative side, I would probably call myself a social media expert. Its that idea “in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king!” I know there is much to learn about social media, but I’m willing and able and feel that I’m moving in the right direction.
Good comments and post everyone!
As someone who is about to launch a groundswell optimization consultancy in Australia, I find this thread very appealing. I don’t consider myself an expert nor will I ever, and for the reasons people have already mentioned here, its a moving target and one that is rapidly accelerating. What I do consider myself to be is an professionally engaged ambassador who provides a service to non engaged individuals.
Of course having domain experience goes along way but it starts with intention and then attention and finally commitment. So am I an expert? Does it matter? Our ego likes to think it does and for those who are faking it, there is no better place to sniff them out than in the groundswell.
Supercharged Karma,
CG
Great article. I am having issues understanding SEO for my advertising. I find the social sites a bit easier to understand as I like to talk to people and when you create a relationship with someone, it makes it a lot easier to find out what they do or are looking for. I am here to learn, to grow and educate others on what I only know.
For the ones that do think that they are experts, some I am sure they are but the others that are not I believe it is an ego thing.
I am learning more about this daily.
Candy
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