If You Call Yourself a Social Media Expert You’re Completely Full of Sh*t
I’m not naming names, but the most recent “social media expert” to follow me on Twitter has inspired me to run to the top of a mountain and shout with my sisters, like an angry folk singer. If this article offends you then direct any hate towards @anonymous.
I’m not the first person to rail against the title, but most of the blogs and articles that have called them out narrowly focus on the term social media. Those who have been in this business since Netscape 1.0, which I refer to as The Day It All Changed, know that social media itself is complete bullshit.
Social Media is nothing more than a means of efficient communication. For a corporation, it’s the evolution of email marketing, where companies would spend upwards of weeks to form a perfect message that fits “above the fold."
Now they have to respond or reach out in a more human-like way that feels less manufactured. Speaking of human-like, the demand for social media never would have taken off if it weren’t for the internally accepted corporate practice of forcing customers to endure automated phone trees that got so unwieldy us impatient types just pushed 0 over and over until a real human picked up the call.
As for those of us who have been in the online space prior to 2001, we all know that today’s Social Media Manager was yesterday’s Webmaster. Remember when everyone was pining to be a Webmaster and every company convinced themselves they needed one? Now I see an abundance of Social Media Manager openings. Like Webmasters, these positions have quickly become a commodity role and have no intrinsic value among internal senior staff and target young (AKA cheap) talent. However, since it’s the hot new title, people are climbing all over each other, like lobsters in a tank, for the job.
However, most “social media experts” are not Social Media Managers. They come from a variety of backgrounds and, though not scientifically proven, may base their expertise on simply joining Friendster, LinkedIn and Twitter prior to 2008. Dear “experts,” if you never joined Friendster, you don’t even qualify to give yourself the full-of-shit title. You haven’t lived social media unless you suffered through 20-minute photo uploads to Friendster.
Should you be forced to evaluate an “expert" — whether an individual or agency that touts how “they get it” — then let me offer up what I call my “Questions of Substance to Out Social Media Experts”:
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