I made a small mistake this evening. I broke my self-imposed social media exile to retweet something by Alan Patrick, that linked to this post on his blog. And suddenly, I found myself besieged by unhappy social media pros that I respect.
There's clearly an issue here. :-)
So, let's make something clear and then make a prediction for the coming year.
The Clarification
I am not saying all social media professionals are snake oil salesmen. For the last three and a half years I have earned my living exclusively by teaching people about social media. I am, by any definition, a social media pro. I may have been indulging in some Christmas "cheer". but I have no desire to shoot myself in the foot. :-)
The fundamental problem is this: the rise of Twitter and the social networks has made creating the veneer of social media proficiency easy. There are simple ways of building large follower bases without actually accumulating any genuine influence. The article I retweeted illustrates this exponential rise of carpet-baggers, self-proclaimed gurus who are happy to take people's money for largely illusory return. And, in the meantime, those with genuine skills in this area find themselves marginalised by the charlatans.
The Prediction
So here's the challenge for those of us who have a record in this space, who have genuine experience to share and have results to back up that learning:
We have to find a way to differentiate ourselves from the snake oil salesmen.
And let's face it - it shouldn't be hard. We have networks, and influence and page rank and all the tools that we have spent years developing. We should be able to do this. Sure, most of us are busy doing the damn job, but this is important. If we don't fight back - if we don't reclaim the name from those who abuse it, we're going to create problems for ourselves in the medium term.
If we fail in this then the very words "social media" and the concepts that underlie them run the risk of being debased by the get-rich-quick merchants. And that's a situation that will take years to recover from.
Here's my prediction: this fight is going to get more acute in the year to come, and a whole lot more vicious.
But it needs to be fought.
And now, here's a picture of a bird just to lighten the mood:
Tweet, tweet. :)
I differentiate myself by tweeting what appeals to me...not what is meant to appeal to anyone else. This makes some followers angry with me, and they complain and leave. Good riddance to 'em. I'm not tweeting for them. I'm tweeting for me, and people who want to know what's going on with me.
"The rise of Twitter and the social networks has made creating the veneer of social media proficiency easy."
That's exactly it. This veneer is making the jobs of people who use social media in actual professional settings more difficult. Clients and employers will see that someone has managed to build 60,000 followers. Why, then, can't you? You're the "social media guy" here.
I wrote about this a bit on my own blog. Social media 'pros' are then forced into a climb-down by explaining the difference between a valuable follower and someone who's just a number. The majority of these people who are "social media gurus" are able to inflate following numbers using shady methods, which then creates the air of authenticity, when in fact there is none.
The only way I can see to differentiate is the take social media to the next level, by using it as a tool to facilitate "web 3.0" interactions, if you will - taking the conversation offline and into face-to-face interactions with the people of value who follow your social media presences.
One small step which would help separate out the knowledgeable from the gurus would be if in 2010 we start seeing Twitter grading/rating/scoring systems giving more attention to the quality of followers rather than just their number.
One way to do this would be to check followers against a Twitter spam service (such as TwitSweeper) and deduct points the more spammy followers you have.
Just been reading the outcry you had to deal with - I was in turn merely pointing to an article that showed the number of people on Twitter who labelled themselves as "Social Media Gurus" etc has risen from c 5,000 to c 16,000 in the last 6 months. To be criticised for pointing this out is ludicrous, shooting messengers has never been an effective strategy.
Imho those people who criticised you - and by proxy me - are in total denial about this issue.
They are also imho therefore crap businesspeople. As you rightly point out, any form of differentiation is very hard right now - typical in an emerging field - so snake oil opportunities are boundless.
There is an economic description of this phenomenon by George Akerlof, the "law of lemons" - he studied the used car market, where its very hard to tell a lemon so the market assumes all used cars are lemons and thus de-values them accordingly.
Thus, Non-Lemon car sellers then have to find ways of differentiating themselves that Lemon sellers cannot match. Social media is far from the first industry to face this issue.
It shouldn't be that hard, as you point out, assuming that you are (i) competent and (ii) have a track record
So as a professional you are worried that you are being marginalised and devalued by a massive host of johnny-come-latelies with few genuine skills but the ear of the audience?
I guess that means you're still a journalist after all!
(Merry Christmas, Adam - see you in 2010.)
Thank you for this post.
I have been working in social media for the last 3 years and have spent considerable sums of money, time, and research in learning social media and how to use it effectively for business. I have offered free & paid seminars for business to share how they can harness the power of the internet, through social media, to increase their visibility on the net to gain more traffic, clients, etc.
What I am now finding are marketers who are calling themselves "social media experts" and selling inferior services to unsuspecting businesses. They aren't using the tools they are promoting, or if they are, they are not using them correctly. (I know this is a blanket statement but it's what I am experiencing in my area)
So, I recommend to any business, when someone calls themself a social media "expert", walk away. You will save yourself a lot of frustration and money.
Cool! Keep up the good work and thank you for sharing.