Social Media: Knowing It vs. Doing It
The number of social media experts is on the rise. In fact, that number may be growing as fast as the number of new blogs. There are a lot of people who are looking for new ways to market themselves to employers and their clients. Being a social media expert (or claiming it) is certainly one way to gain some extra attention. But social media is not about what you claim you know. It’s not even about what you do know. It’s more about what you can do with the knowledge you have.
You can be an expert in Google Wave or Twitter. You may know all the commands and even spend hours everyday playing with these services. But if you don’t know how you can provide value to your company through these services, you are not really an expert. There are too many people who spend their time going to conferences, picking up industry jargon, and claiming things that are not necessarily true. These won’t really make you an expert in the field of social media nor does the fact that you can set up a blog by yourself.
Most of us have seen the movie Matrix. There is a big difference between knowing you can do something and actually walking the walk. If you are planning to get a job as a social media expert, you want to be able to demonstrate what you can do with the social media. That’s more than having a certain number of followers on Twitter or blogging everyday. Think about it. An employer that is going to give you a chance with its social media program is going to expect you to give it a good return on investment. As a social media expert, you are going to have to use services such as Twitter to listen to what customers have to say, analyze their ideas, address their negative feedback, and bring prospects on board and help them make their decisions in an easier fashion. You may also have to run contests, out-reach programs, and social media ROI analysis for your company.
The best way to master the above tasks is by doing it and practicing your craft. If you own a blog, you can use it to run contests (on your blog or Facebook page). You can also practice determining your own social media ROI to make sure you are ready to do it for your employer. The same approach applies to other tasks as well. The moral of story is, you can’t just claim you are a social media expert. That means nothing these days. There are over 15,000 of them on Twitter already. What makes you stand out?
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