Why Can't There Be Social Media Experts?

[David Mark]

I'm tired of hearing, "There's no such thing as a social media expert". Why not? There are experts in every other field of study and practice. Social media, as a concept, may be in it's embryonic stage, but the practice is not. Based on my research and humble opinion, I believe there are credible sources within the social media universe. I have no problem calling them experts. There are sociology experts, marketing experts, communication experts and there are media experts. Why not social media experts?

As far as I'm concerned, if I'm consistently relying on you for tactics, advice and strategies (in any field), you are, in fact, an expert.

I'm eagerly awaiting your opinion...

[Lisa Schwaberow]

I applied for a job position at HP for social media advocate. The job resposibilites included being involved in the social media areas promoting HP and watching for what was being said. Go to any of the job boards and type in social media and you will see a whole range of jobs in this area. I think if you work full time in this that it won't be long before you could consider yourself an expert!

[Mike Seidle]

David and Elizabeth -

The real experts on social media are people like Evan Willams, Biz Stone, Tom Anderson, Roblimo Miller (representing countless bloggers, web loggers and journal writers who got this little blog thing going), Drew Curtis (representing discussion forums) Reid Hoffman, and Mark Zuckerberg. If you don't know who these people are, take a minute to Google them. These people were the pioneers and currently the people with the inside skinny on how it all works. Using Twitter does not imply you understand how Twitter really works. How many Social Media Experts have purchased ads on Facebook? Wrote an application? At the end of the day, the rest of are users - power users in some cases, expert users in others, but in reality we don't have the inside knowledge of social media to lay claim to being an expert on the subject. It's akin to calling yourself a computer software expert without knowing how to write a single line of code. You may know lots, but there's a lot more you don't know.

Anyhow, none of us can be experts because we are not from out of town.

[David Mark]

Thanks Mike! Perfect response. So, since I've seen your work (to an extent), I'm anxious to see if you consider yourself as an expert. To everyone else - if you've ever had the pleasure to meet Mike and Erik Deckers, you'll appreciate me asking this question. They do know a thing or two about socmed. Care to share Mike?

[Mike Seidle]

David - Thanks for the complimentary introduction. I can't speak for Erik, but I don't consider myself an expert on social media. User? Yes. Professional? Maybe. Enthusiast? For certain. Practitioner? Probably. Ninja? Not sneaky enough. Guru? Need a better crystal ball and I'm short a Karnac the Magnificent hat. The terms "expert" and "guru" really are overused - especially with social media, and especially by people that have less experience in the field than a high school grad who's been on MySpace since grade eight.

[David Mark]

Hilarious. Well-stated. :D

[Amy Stark]

At a TweetUp a few months ago, Erik Deckers defined a ninja as, "someone with really smart moves and a cool outfit." and that's the definition I use, too. =)

[Stephen James]

There are 21,439 twitter users listed under the category Social Media on Twellow. I'm sure not of these people claim to be experts. The fact that so many people use social media frequently and that so many people are starting to use it creates a paradigm in which many people can claim relative expertise. The web is very self-defining--there is no truth police. Start your own Wikipedia article and add social media expert to your by line.

[Chris Theisen]

Mike's reply reminded me of a great piece from the movie The Pistol about the life of Pete Maravich. Transcript from imdb
Press Maravich: [to his players at practice] I am not spending valuable hours of my life just to teach you boys to throw a ball through an iron hoop, this is a way of life, I want players to think. Work, sweat, challenge themselves, disapline themselves, because anything else you boys it just isn't worth it, to anyone. The problem wwith you boys is simple. You're all a bunch of dummies cause you think you know it all. Give me the ball.
[He draws a small circle on the ball]
Press Maravich: You see this circle? The size of this circle represents everything that I know about basketball. But the size of this ball represents everything about the game that has neer been dicovered.
[He puts a small dot on the ball]
Press Maravich: This dot is what you know, combined
[throws the ball back to the player]

There are alot of people that have a dots worth of knowledge about social media. There are fewer people who have a circle worth of knowledge and then there are the people Mike mentioned but even for those people there is still a whole basketball out there.

[Nicki Laycoax]

I agree 90% with Elizabeth. I can't say 100% because I may find something I disagree with about it down the road, but in my opinion, she has hit the nail on the head.

I also agree with some of what David said. If one is consistently being relied upon for advice on tactics, etc... I would consider them some level of expert, your expert. It might be an expert in communicating ways to use forms of social media, or an expert based on their experiences, or an expert in someone elses' eyes, but there is some level of expert there... Being able to teach a non-web user how to be effective online does, in some way, in my opinion, deem you an expert.

I see topics and comments like this one, and clearly they are about a certain person or people that have said these things. I wonder why names are not mentioned? I've started to see the "dog-eat-dog" atmosphere, in Indy and I'm wondering why eggshells are stepped on so frequently in public venues such as this one. Is it class and respect or is cattiness and the inability to approach the person in fear of stepping on toes? Please forgive my candidness this morning...

[Chris Theisen]

Candidness should never need to be forgiven.

[David Mark]

I obviously can't and won't speak for anyone else, but my motivation for posting was ONLY revolving around the strong opinion people have about said subject. I hear and have read about "there is no such thing as a SOCMED expert" several times lately and I just wanted to know why that opinion exists so often with hateful passion.

Dog-eat-Dog, as you put it, is alive and well in EVERY field, in every city and has been around long before SOCMED practitioners have proudly come on the scene.. It's just that SOCMED is the new kid on the block. It's human nature to mark your territory. I'm not saying it's right, only that it exists. I wouldn't concern yourself with what others have to say. Just show up big and be genuine. You must know people can read right through you when you're full of sh*t. You can only get away with your racket for so long before the chopping block presents itself in the village square.

As far as your questions go, I sense you've experienced some backlash lately and maybe a little defensiveness in your tone. Care to elaborate? I won't mention names out of respect. Cattiness is slinging names on SI and then arguing in a 158 reply discussion thread. Any names comes to mind (no need to write them here!)? I have zero interest calling people out. Where will that get me, or you? Who am I to do that? Who are you to do that?

I don't have all of the answers, but the fact remains. There are people who are SOCMED posers. Their offline presence is a 180 from their online presence. Do as I say, not as I do. It's really sad. Not boo hoo sad, but pathetic. Flashy website with all the bells and whistles, smiling faces and testimonials AND even great blog posts. If you sell yourself as a kickass whatever, you owe it to yourself and others to be consistent (in person and online). It's so easy to hide behind your lovely online domain.

[Nicki Laycoax]

I wasn't referring to you ... :) No backlash experienced here, and no defensiveness. It seems that every time I meet with someone, they mention folks that they are not fans of but then appear to be buddy buddy with the very people that they have just put down. It's interesting...

I'm just kinda sitting back and watching and listening. I'm learning a lot from the race!