Slightly Different Blog

Just recently there is a lot in the press and online about the use of social media.  You can’t turn around these days without getting hit in the face with a tweet.  Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon.

You just know when the Government starts Twittering it’s time to start looking for the next big thing, as they’ll only ruin it.

The thing that annoys me most is all the experts that start to crop up running ‘courses’ in using social media.  Every other day I get an email from an ‘expert’ promising untold riches if I get them to tell me how to do it.

Thing is, I want to know what exactly qualifies these people?

What, they can use facebook, so therfore they are facebook experts?  Mmm..I drink several cups of coffee a day.  Does that make me a coffee expert?

No, it just makes me slightly jittery.

So they tweet and can tell other people how to tweet?  Wow! Because twitter is so difficult to use, what with the whole ‘writing 140 characters’ thing.

Ask yourself this, would you want a mechanic working on your car who claimed to be an ‘expert’ because he can drive?  No, you want someone who can take the thing apart and put it together again.  That is an expert.

Look, I appreciate that social media has excellent marketing potential, and I use it myself, but calling yourself an ‘expert’, or, in one article I read recently an ‘industry leader’ makes me laugh.  Especially when the articles are written by the ‘experts’ themselves.  Shameless self promotion, promising the world and delivering very little.

I don’t think anyone should call themselves an ‘expert’ unless they have actually designed and built a social media system.

Using something doesn’t automatically make you an expert.  It makes you a user, that’s all.

If you want to deal with experts, check their credentials first.  Would they be technically capable of creating it in the first place?  If the answer is no, go look for someone who can.