Social Media Marketing: Beware the “Experts”

I have a confession. A big confession. One that may very well destroy my reputation. Are you ready for it? I’m a social media doubter.

If you’re still reading, and have lost all confidence in everything I have to say, I suppose I owe an explanation.

My Social Media Experience

My social media journey has been tentative, undistinguished, and lackluster. I started off on the right path. Many years ago, I enjoyed hanging around internet forums and mailing lists, and interacting with people in that manner. That was arguably the earliest form of social media on the internet (unless you count BBS as social media). However, from there, things started to get out of control, and I wasn’t sure I liked where things were going. It started with MySpace and my eery feeling that everyone on it was doing something creepy, so I never created an account.

Then came Facebook, and I assumed that was pretty much the same thing as MySpace. Something happened with Facebook, though. All my friends were on it, and they were posting all their pictures on it, and having whole conversations on it. It even spilled into their regular conversations. I felt lost half the time around my own friends because I didn’t have a Facebook account.

So I caved.

I’ve now had a Facebook account for several years, but it’s always been reluctantly. I have never posted anything more than a profile pic and some basic information. I’ve never added a friend (although I do accept friend requests), albums, notes, or played any facebook games. My presence on Facebook is purely voyeuristic. I’m not an active participant.

Enter LinkedIn. I think I created my LinkedIn profile when I was looking for a new job. Before I could complete it, I’d found one. My LinkedIn profile now sits gathering dust and is only awakened when a colleague stumbles across its comatose form and asks to connect with me.

Then there was Twitter. I resisted Twitter for so long because I thought it would be a huge time sink. A few months ago, I started to experiment with it. I am now active on it. My follower count is underwhelming, and I’m still more of an observer than anything else, but I’ve become fascinated by Twitter and all its possibilities. That doesn’t change the fact that I was right about it being a huge time sink.

Finally, there’s blogging. I’ve been reading blogs for years, but only started my first real attempt at a blog, 52 Short Stories, in January 2009. 52SS remains a personal passion project of mine. I don’t expect many people to read it. The blog you’re reading is a professional endeavour and part of my professional development.  I’ve enjoyed my foray into the world of blogging so far. I’ve learned a lot and had conversations with some intelligent people.

Social Media “Experts”

So why am I telling you any of this? Because I want it to be clear to anyone who reads this blog where I’m coming from whenever I talk about social media. In terms of most forms of marketing, I consider myself to be well-read, experienced and possessing expertise. In social media, I’m a recent convert. I’m reluctant on Facebook, a Twitter neophyte, and a LinkedIn virgin. I study social media fervently, but I don’t have the expertise on it that I can claim in other areas. Instead, when I talk about social media, I’m talking not as an expert, but as a student.

Does that mean you should ignore what I have to say on the topic? On the contrary, I think my learning experiences can be valuable to someone who’s also trying to learn the ropes. You can avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made, or extrapolate on some of my successes and create your own path.

Besides, there is no such thing as a social media marketing expert. Sure, tons of people have written books on Twitter and other forms of SM, but they’re not experts. Social media is too new to have any experts. Everyone is still experimenting. The closest thing to an expert I’ve seen is Chris Brogan, and that’s through sheer immersion. As of right now, there is no right or wrong way to use social media. The rule book hasn’t been written yet, which makes it an exciting place to be. It also makes it a scary place to be for small and medium sized businesses that have little margin for error on their marketing strategies.

That’s why I’m going to be conducting some social media experiments of my own and reporting back on them, and in my next post I’ll look at the value of social media for small businesses and give some tips for starting out in it.

Until then, here are some thoughts to mull over:

How long have you been involved in social media? How much has it changed the way you interact with the people around you? How has it changed the way you meet people? How often do you think of social media in a business sense?