credit: *^ ^* Sherry

Over the last three weeks I’ve seen a rather stupid rash of posts claiming that social media experts are a myth. Most recently an article at ereleases went popular on Sphinn.

Many of these articles are ridiculous, duplicitous, and unhelpful. They make claims like:

1. Social media is new and constantly evolving
2. There is no right way to use social media
3. What works for one may not work for another

Social Media is NOT New

First, social media is not new. The name is new but the content is not. The modern social media platforms started wide scale use in 2002, more or less, with Friendster and Myspace. Blogs, and their communities, predate that (1997). Before that there were already forums, user groups, and Bulletin Board Systems! The Internet has been a social medium for a very long time. All the way back to the 1970s the back-bone concept of Twitter has been available, but without the character limit. People have been using written telecommunication interactions to pass information and have conversation for more than 30 years.

While social media is evolving it isn’t really moving forward; platforms like Facebook and Twitter are actually taking retrograde action into behavior that is more like forums (Hashtags, Groups, and Fan Pages).

There IS a Wrong Way to Use Social Media

Second, there is a wrong way to use every platform. Reddit has different etiquette than Digg, Facebook has different etiquette than Myspace, and every platform has a different group that are their power users. The background and important issue for the power user group creates a clear set of negative actions on the platform; Dan Zarrella just shared why you don’t bash Twitter on Facebook.

What Works for One May Not Work for Another

This is a truism. Every time you use a truism to make an argument Socrates shoots a kitten from a cannon.

Defining Experts

Experts are people who know considerably more than the general populace about a given subject. It doesn’t matter the number of hours (though 10,000 is a popular distinction), even after a year in a profession you will know more about the job than most people. There are countless people that have been working on the web who have been actively engaged in multiple social platforms, forums, or blogging reaching back for 5 to 10 years. There are thousands of people who understand marketing strategy, web analytics, blogging, etc. and also spend thousands of hours on multiple platforms and communities to understand the etiquette of the most popular sites. These people can easily describe the communities and their norms, in addition to offering other value to your web presence.

If you are worried about the expertise of the person you are talking to ask, “Yes, and how does that support your other work?” If they don’t have some way of leveraging the knowledge, they can’t really help you, but that doesn’t mean they don’t know the landscape in and out. A social media expert is not really useful unless they have some additional skill to connect to their knowledge.

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