Are you a Social Media or Marketing expert?
I was prompted into this by a recent post from a so called ‘expert’ who clearly didn’t think out his post and what reactions would come before he posted!
Social marketing is the systematic application of marketing along with other concepts and techniques to achieve specific behavioral goals for a social good. Social marketing can be applied to promote, for example, merit goods, make the society avoid demerit goods and thus to promote that considers society’s well being as a whole. This may include asking people not to smoke in public areas, for example, ask them to use seat belts, prompting to make them follow speed limits.
So what makes an expert in these fields an expert?
I certainly couldn’t and would not claim to be an expert in anything, I’m interested in many things but would never proclaim for love nor money that I knew everything in a field or niche!
This post gives you a few clues as to what to be on the lookout for ‘Beware self-proclaimed social marketing experts – 10 simple rules to tell who you are talking to’, now I’m not sure if this is an original source document so sorry to the original author if its not!
If someone tells you they are an expert in social marketing, they are probably not…
I have to laugh when I see (and I’m talking mostly Twitter here) all the so called experts and their claims and advice which they dish out second hand, mostly handed down to them by other Twitterers or via an RSS feed their subscribed too and quickly dish out the advice they’ve pawned from it or save it for a little later when they think most have forgotten about the original post!
Check out your ‘expert’ for yourself
Now the expert that I motivated me to this post and you’ll probably figure it out from my timeline and comments really should think about what their site and their guest posts say about them!
Some examples and please correct me, slag me, shout at me and call me names if you like but these are just opinions and like I said I’m no expert either but I never Claim to be!
I have a blog and I archive all my tweet’s on it weekly . . . Sorry Fail!
I have links to backlink sales promotions . . . Fail, especially when you have a PR0 site with minimal backlinks yourself! (Yes I have no PR on this subdomain but I only started it 2 weeks ago ;) )
I openly claim to be an entreprenuer . . . No this should be a title given by others either in the news or industry experts but definitely not something you give yourself.
I always follow a few hundred more people on Twitter than follow me . . . Fail, you had a good head start and now you just keep adding a hundred a day to get the number’s up!
Use tacky stock photos in your blog posts . . . Oops I Fail!
Am I an expert? ;) LOL You can bet your ass I am, an expert in my own opinions!What anger’s you about the Social Media / Marketing scene? What positive point or tips have you experienced?
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Expert expert expert…
Blah blah blah. Im a professional Expert is what you will be hearing next, or an Expert in being Professional. I have actually heard it once or twice, and yes, only through Twitter.
It’s ok to be confident, to have trust in yourself and your abilities, calling yourself an Expert however, I guess much like calling yourself a professional is somewhat of a grey area with lots of people.
BUt you hit the nail on the head with the onslaught of people seeping through the cracks claiming to be this and that when they are so clearly nothing more than following the next easy path to a instant career trend.
Meh.
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I am an expert and being an expert in a field where experts talk to other experts about how much of an expert they are :)
The thing that kills me the most is that now “EVERYONE” is a “social media marketing” specialist, yet they’ve got 36 friends on twitter, only stumbled 400 pages in stumbleupon and has never used digg, mixx, sphinn or other social media websites.
I think the word EXPERT should only be used by people who make a million+ each year SOLELY through social media work. just my opinion though.
I run a blog with social media related articles, but I never claim on it to be an expert. I’m just sharing my advice and things I’ve seen work/not work. More people need to play the right roles. But then again, in another couple years the next big craze will come through and 90% of the “experts” with social media will become experts somewhere else.
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The whole marketing game makes me ill. I frequently find people calling themselves “experts” to be the most close-minded, arrogant, and ignorant people in the business. I prefer working with people who understand their limits, are open to new ideas, and are always striving to improve their game.
I’ve been hearing about that “professional” word going around, people who are not qualified yet to earn that word seem to be using it a lot lately..in my opinion you don’t have the right to tell people you are an expert in something, you get it by showing your work and gaining feedback from a decent number of clients/admirers, I’ve been saying this and I will keep saying it, being an expert in something means you have studied, worked, learned a lot to reach that professional level in your area, I -for example- am an expert in finding what I like and what’s useful to me, I use Social Media tools in order to fulfill my needs..not to go around bragging about being some sort of an expert even though most of the people that say that word tend to be more of a beginner than an expert…so please so-called- experts…SHUT UP AND STOP TELLING US THAT YOU ARE AN EXPERT…PROVE IT!
Thanks Roger :)…great post!
I watched a Tv program and they were talking about composers and that their true master pieces were created when they were grey and old becasue it took them so long to master there niche.
I guess if you work at something long enough you could call your self an expert but you may only but an expert in a certian part of you job eg. web designer > coder > php coder < expert at php not expert web designer or expert coder. can you cover all the social medias and market everything, do the same rules apply!
I think i might start calling myself a scientist because i like experimenting with certain mediums but by no means an expert.
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It’s especially frustrating when these so-called experts, faced with the mistakes they made, keep telling everyone there’s nothing wrong with their ideas, but it’s all about the execution…
That’s just a load of crap… If there’s one business that shouldn’t have any experts at all it’s marketing… it’s all about gutfeelings and has too many variables to come to exact conclusions. The only thing people can do is follow that feeling and hope they don’t make the same mistake twice. Cause we make mistakes, more often than we succeed actually. (or is that just me? :) If so… hope my boss isn’t reading)
“opinions are like assholes, everyone has one”
(Can’t remember who said it, but it fits just right in this discussion)
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There is a lot of negative talk right now about “social marketing experts” and I think you keyed into the “expert” part. The funny thing is, you completely ignored the part about social marketing.
Social MEDIA marketing is pretty big right now, and because it’s a new field, it’s difficult to determine who’s an expert.
However, social marketing (as mentioned in the quote, referring to behaviour change) is NOT a new field. Referring to the wikipedia entry on social marketing (interestingly enough, from which your quote appears to be pulled), social marketing as a discipline has been around since the 1970s. There is an academic journal and academic programs dedicated to the field. It has NOTHING to do with how often you blog or tweet.
Experts in the social marketing field? Those who are published and have made advances in the field. I’d mention Nedra Weinreich and R Craig Lefevre, who don’t just blast into an echo chamber but work within an established field to offer content of value.
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