Why Can't There Be Social Media Experts?

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Permalink Reply by David Mark on July 9, 2009 at 3:57pm

I didn't think you meant me. I'm just playing along, sister! ;) I do understand where you're coming from. It's a funny game we play. The game called 'Life'. We're all just a bunch of kids playing in one giant sandbox.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Seidle on July 10, 2009 at 11:12pm

David - This video accurately describes social media experts marking their territory (man I miss Ren & Stimpy).

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Permalink Reply by David Mark on July 12, 2009 at 2:45pm

good stuff. I loved these guys back in college.

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Permalink Reply by Erik Deckers on July 11, 2009 at 8:45pm

So what if we redefined what "expert" means? We've all been (me included) using the Malcolm Gladwell definition of 10,000 hours of experience.

But since 10,000 hours usually involves working 40 hours a week every week for 5 years, that's going to be difficult to achieve for another year or two.

But what if "expert" in the social media realm meant the people who knew the most about it, NOT the people who have used it for 5 -7 years? Would it be possible to identify experts then? What would they look like. skill and experience-wise?

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Permalink Reply by Amy Stark on July 12, 2009 at 2:18pm

I think social media has less to do with technology, and more to do with an ability to communicate effectively. The same marketing / PR best practices and tenets from 15 or 2,000 years ago remain valid,
and are at the heart of social media. The technology to have a "digital dialog not restricted by space or time" is new, but the ability to communicate an idea and engage your stakeholders in conversation pre-dates cavemen, don't you think? The concept, "Word of mouth is the best form of advertising" is not new.

I remember at Hubbard and Cravens you once said something like, "What if there is NOTHING NEW, just variations on a theme that have evolved and improved?" I often describe the access and information dissemination that occurs on the Internet is really just Gutenberg's press on steroids.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Seidle on July 13, 2009 at 12:55pm

I like the 10,000 hour definition. It's funny picturing some of the self-proclaimed experts or companies trying to cram in 10,000 hours in six months - a real feat considering there are only 8,760 hours in a year if you don't sleep. Reality is social media has been around for quite some time. Blogs and RSS have been around since the mid 1990s (RSS was the technology behind Netscape's "Channels" feature). Social Networks have been around since at least 2002 when Friendster Launched and eUniverse created the Friendster knock off known as MySpace. That's seven years, and plenty of time for real expertise to have emerged.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Hill on September 29, 2009 at 10:58pm

I would be quick to say that anyone who makes a good living working in social media is an expert. But the reality is that celebrities, many of whom are far from being experts in anything, can probably contribute some of their fame and subsequent riches to social media. So as far as my definition of a social media expert is concerned, I would say that it is someone who can accurately make predictions in social media trends, can create successful plans in building social media presence, and can be profitable in the utilization of social media.

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Permalink Reply by Joe Shoemaker on November 10, 2009 at 3:38pm

I am fascinated by the narrow scope of experience of some self-proclaimed expert deniers.

Some of us here were working in Marketing/Advertising/PR, had email addresses and were hand coding HTML long before they hit puberty.

Ever heard of eWorld?

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