From attending few conferences, siminars and even surfing the web there will always be someone who claims he or she is a social media expert. Gary vaynerchuk seems to sum up might taughts as his website. ( What he says is 99% of social media experts are clowns ). I been seeing a lot of young people ( Age 20-35 ) jumping on the social media bandwagon with little or zero marketing experience--not to mention a lack of social media management skills or any campaign track record. And yet they call themselves "social media experts" giving siminars, getting huge contracts, etc.

Aug 20, 2011

Category: Social

Posted by: reshwindblade

Disclaimer: I will never admit I am an expert, but I am certain I am able to tell if a person knows more about social media than I do. If you don't know more than I do, how can you be an expert ?.

Here are a few points / questions that should define who is a social media expert and who is not. ( Some of it is inspired from here )

A) Blogs / Micro-blogging - Does the person own a blog ? If no, check if he / she has something like posterous, or maybe even Tumblr ? if still no, check if he / she knows about sites like posterous, or even tumblr exist and what are their functions. If they do have a blog, check out the content of the blog and the naming. Does the naming of the blog a SEO trap? does the content of the blog sounds professional or just random ramblings, or maybe it is just a personal blog.

B) When they started ? -  Find out when they started social media, and I dont mean when they got on Facebook. Even forums count as social media, so if they started that long ago is a good sign.

C) What is social  media ? - This is a question I see many people don't really know how to answer, yet these people claim they are experts. Social media is just a new form of mass media.

D) What is a social  media campaign ? -  To me there is only 1 right answer for this, which is "Developing a great message and then reaching out to people, while giving them an incentive to 'pass it on'".

E) How do you monitor  social media activity ? -  Google Alerts, RSS feeds, subscribing to Tweeting keywords, are all good examples. Sometimes you may even use 3rd party tools like Radiant6 to find out what people are talking accross a variety of social media sites.

F) How does one build an audience ? - Most people will think having the most amount of twitter followers, the highest facebook friends / fans are good ways to measure this, how wrong they are. A good way to build up audience would be to follow interesting people on Social media and leave relavent comments on blogs / articles and keep the conversation going. Followers / Friends does not equal to engagement this is something a lot of people fail to realize.

G) How does one learn about all this social media stuff ? - One answer, experience, you are constantly learning there is no right guru or anything.

H) How does social media effect  SEO ? - It builds relationships that turn into links later.

Those are just a few points I use to see if a guy or girl really knows about Social media or just trying to claim he / she does

Why does everyone try to be an expert ? Can't they just be a participant ?.