There\u2019s been a series of running jokes recently among a few of my blogging friends with social media as the punch line. It seems everyone these days can call himself an expert. All you need is a website, some Twitter and Facebook followers and the ability to regurgitate information. Add in a snazzy infographic and you\u2019re golden.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s so tempting to do. You spend enough time figuring out how to navigate all the social networking platforms, read scores of articles online about what\u2019s trending and suddenly you say to yourself, \u201cI can set up a shingle in cyber land and shovel a load of this techie crap as well as the next guy.\u201d Who\u2019s going to stop me?<\/p>\n
The reality is that there are a boat load of self-proclaimed experts out there that are either not very good or don\u2019t know a whole lot more than the rest of the Internet trolling public about social media. I keep thinking to myself how they all make a living.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve been wondering how to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, look no further. There are tell tale signs that the person you think is an expert actually is not.<\/p>\n
1) Uses an AOL email address<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s face it, communicating via an AOL address is like saying to the world, \u201cI lost track of what\u2019s new on that thing they call the Internet back when Saturday Night Live was still funny.\u201d<\/p>\n
2) Thinks Foursquare is a new burger chain<\/p>\n
It\u2019s nearly impossible to keep up with every website and application but if the so-called expert doesn\u2019t know his Foursquare from his StumbleUpon, he\u2019s on the wrong side of the learning curve.<\/p>\n
3) Speaks in acronyms and tech laced jargon<\/p>\n
If any single conversation or correspondence is filled almost entirely of indecipherable verbiage, the person is trying too hard, has no idea what he\u2019s talking about or enjoys feeling superior. No matter how you slice it, it\u2019s not good. Look out for a preponderance of phrases or words such as \u201cHTML,\u201d \u201cmicro-blogging,\u201d \u201ccloud-centric,\u201d \u201cavatar, \u201d and \u201cCSS\u201d especially in sentences where they don\u2019t seem to make sense.<\/p>\n
4) Takes a \u201cLet\u2019s throw everything but the kitchen sink up and see what sticks\u201d approach<\/p>\n
I like to call this \u201cThe Strategy Without a Strategy\u201d plan. Start posting on every conceivable social networking platform, blog, set up an email marketing campaign. If saturating the market with your business\u2019 logo seems good one place on the web, do it everywhere, all the time.<\/p>\n
5) Writes a whole lot of words online that say very little<\/p>\n
There\u2019s nothing quite like reading an entire article online that only speaks in generalities. My plumber could tell me that social networking is all about making connections or social media is a time commitment. The only thing worse is seeing one of those infographics in place of an actual blog post. Venn diagrams may convey an air of expertise but they\u2019re seldom all that interesting or informative.<\/p>\n
Choose wisely. Chances are you can do most of the social media magic yourself.<\/p>\n
This post and my diagram up top was inspired by an article on Ragan\u2019s PR Daily called 12 Traits of a True Social Media \u2018Expert.\u2019 Go there for the things to actually look for in a social media expert.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There\u2019s been a series of running jokes recently among a few of my blogging friends with social media as the punch line. It seems everyone these days can call himself an expert. All you need is a website, some Twitter and Facebook followers and the ability to regurgitate information. Add in a snazzy infographic and… Read More »Is That Guru I Hired Really A Social media Expert?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","neve_meta_reading_time":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"_ti_tpc_template_sync":false,"_ti_tpc_template_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karenamacallister.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karenamacallister.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karenamacallister.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karenamacallister.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karenamacallister.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/karenamacallister.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60,"href":"https:\/\/karenamacallister.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions\/60"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karenamacallister.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karenamacallister.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karenamacallister.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karenamacallister.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}