The secret that social media professionals don’t want you to know is that you don’t need them.
Setting aside, for a moment, the discussion of how/when/why/if social media is a good tool for your business, if you want to learn social media, you don’t need an expert. You don’t need to pay a consultant to show you Twitter, and you don’t need to wait for Chris Brogan to tell you how to use Facebook.
Social media encourages and reinforces the very forces that teach people social media.
Social media is inherently social, public, and mostly free. And the smartest people in the industry are also inherently social, public, and give away a lot of amazing insight and information for free. Everything you need to know about social media is already available for you, filtered by millions of readers, and optimized from many years of other people’s trial and error. And everyone you need to know to help you learn and apply this knowledge is already willing to engage with you, and help you learn it.
Social media is simply the reapplication of basic human motivations across virtual environments.
Social media is more of a philosophy than it is an exact science. Unlike, for example, the legal industry, proficiency in social media does not require years of memorization and specialization. If you understand some basic key concepts of how the online (and real world) social economy works, you already have ability the use the tool effectively.
If you are smart, and have basic business sense/skills, you can learn all you need to know to successfully apply social media to your business within 6 months. Now, there will always be a market for social media experts because some people’s time is more valuable when spent on other activities than learning social media. But there will be less demand for experts, as people realize that social media is not an abstract concept that is only understood by an elite few.
You probably already understand it, but just haven’t believed that was a possibility. If not, everything you need to learn social media is available for free, including the personalized attention of others who already know how to succeed in social media.
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Alright, let the comments rip. I look forward to your opinions on this thought, even (especially!) if you disagree. 
9 Comments
1 Verilliance wrote:
Agree and disagree. I absolutely agree that social media is just a reapplication of what human beings have done naturally since…forever. Talk, gossip, listen, share — socialize.
We are, after all, social animals.
In that sense, every one of us understands social media intuitively. We all know how to talk and listen, right?
Not completely. Where I see the role of social media “experts” is that they are the people who are better at understanding human behavior at a deeply intuitive level. Coupled with that, they also have the skills to plan, execute, and analyze campaigns.
Anyone can set up a Facebook page or profile. But not just anyone can hone in on goals and then a plan to reach those goals.
Just as in the offline world you have people who are better at party planning, or fundraising, or networking, or leadership, or whatever other social activity that anyone can do, but only a few know how to do well and effortlessly.
2 EF wrote:
Thanks for your comment! I know you are an “expert” on the human aspect of this study
. If the skills we need to succeed are social skills, not media skills, maybe we have the wrong criteria for what an “expert” is in this industry? So, maybe we should just have “social experts” instead of “social media experts”.
3 Verilliance wrote:
That’s an interesting thought — one that has crossed my mind. I certainly think it matters to a degree, but then I’ve seen people who are a whiz at being social, but don’t know how to define goals or analyze data or report on ROI.
So I do think there is room for experts, and they need to have exceptional intuition about human behavior, along with the ability to strategize and analyze.
This has been a post sitting in the back of my head for a while now actually. Maybe it’s time I write it.
4 Verilliance wrote:
Another thought — off the top of my head, the two real world careers I can think of that closely match the skills needed are planners and fundraisers.
5 EF wrote:
How about we settle on “social business experts”? I think that is probably the most accurate.
Glad we figured that out. I think that term has a much better denotation and connotation.
6 Matt Ridings @techguerilla wrote:
I think you’re incorrect on this one, let me try and explain why. Before I do that however let me say without hesitation that I’m not implying one can’t build and integrate social media into their own organizations. Simply that the equation isn’t “do you need”, it’s whether you believe in utilizing consultants or not.
In either case I think you miss the mark if “social media skills” are the measure of an expert. That’s an executional requirement, not a strategic one. What a true “social media expert” brings to the table is focus. How does your org operate, what areas could be improved by integrating social media, what do those audiences look like and how do we find them to access them, etc. Without past experience in these areas you are simply learning as you go, which is fine, but is riskier and takes a long time.
The skills of “being social” are important at the interaction level. The expert only uses their knowledge of them as a means to gauge what will and won’t work and how best to structure an attack plan.
Cheers,
Matt Ridings – @techguerilla
7 EF wrote:
Thanks for your opinion, Matt. I see your point, and agree that there are certainly many social media consultants that do have a focused, experienced method, and can provide great value to companies. I just think that a lot of the “experts” we see don’t really know enough about business to be advising companies. Their knowledge and skills are at a level that someone else could achieve in 6 months. The true expert consultants are definitely worth it for a company who builds with consultants, but many “experts” aren’t truly “experts”.
Thanks again. Great stuff.
best,
Eric
8 Paul Gailey wrote:
It´s an argument reminiscent of that levied at SEO practitioners some years ago: You don´t need them, you can achieve 90% of it by abiding by W3C and Google published guidelines. Yes and No. It can depend on the ambition and scale of your operation. Because the barriers to entry of participating in social media are record low, it attracts everyone, and whilst “it´s easy to do” it´s hard to master for business effectiveness. We can all watch a Michelin chef cook up a delight on TV but could we devise the recipe, flawlessly execute it, and earn the restaurant the big $ for it?
9 EF wrote:
Paul, i see your point, and I think it’s accurate. I think the main difference between the SEO example and social media, is that IMO social media wont be its own skill set and dept in the long run. Social media (or whatever we call it when the terminology evolves, which it will soon) will be just another requisite skill of marketers, PR, and CRM, or really anyone in biz. There will still be some people who “do” social media, but I dont think it will have its own space as much as SEO does now.
Great thought tho. Thanks for it!
Best,
Eric
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