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One Problem with Social Media Experts
Posted by clioandme • 9/21/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: social media
I just read an interesting blog post about how social media experts interact in a way rather different from people who have real discussions, disagreements and arguments. But don't judge it based on this brief summary. Have a read. It definitely provides food for thought, and there's a good discussion in the comments section too.
businessesgrow.com/2009/09/21/the-social-media-country-club/
Hat-tip: twitter.com/BillSledzik/statuses/4161469352
User Comments
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Wow! Thanks for posting this great read.
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That was a good read. I don't want to comment on the blog because I don't know any of these gurus mentioned, so I might step right into *it*, but there is a lot of truth to the background of the "club mentality". I have often wondered if anyone comes up with anything new anymore or are we all just repeating one anther, because this is the accepted truth... For example, blog promotion. Good grief! If I read one more of the same 10 steps to successful blogging, which are completely useless to many blogs, I'm going to scream.
In my Twitter account there are a few tweeters that get retweeted ALL THE TIME. I mean we all follow Problogger and that other dude who's name I can never remember, there's really no reason to repeat it. When we blog, there's no reason to link back to WebProNews, we've been there already! It is not a great discovery to point people over to Blog Catalog, as we all know it's here. We would, however, do real favours to put forward some of the less known but still hugely talented bloggers and websites that we come across during our daily surfs.
While I agree that arguing is counter productive, and new commers need to respect the established community somewhat, it is worrying how afraid people are to disagree. I'll give you an completely unrelated example from the world of dog hobbyists. If a community member starts a topic about how horribly her dog was attacked and how stupid the other owner was, she gets pats on the back of how well she handled the situation. If it would happen that the owner of the attacking dog would start a discussion, about how the other dogs owner brought on the attack, she gets the same praise and pats as the other party, even if both described the situation without conflicts, no matter how silly one or the other was in the situation. -
That was a great piece and so true. I don't know how many things I read by those in social media, or those wanting to brand themselves or those following each other around tweeting this and that, most of it really pretty repetitive, and some of it plagiarized,they are not experts, they've never really done anything in life, and so on and so forth.
It makes me happy I'm not interested in that as a way of life or career, but geezy peezy enough is enough.
I wouldn't know a social media guru if I saw one except for the standard names that have been around forever, but I know it seems everyone wants to be one. -
Great post that brings a very interesting discussion. "newbies" as stated have to learn one way or the other and many jump in with very high expectation. As with any business you need to learn all the way, participate. Once you have proven you can bring something valuable then you start to get the recognition.
Thanks for sharing. -
Nice read. The "Country Club" analogy is pretty fitting really, and not too terribly surprising. Most of the "Social Media Gurus" cut their teeth in internet marketing and adopted Social Media as a sub niche OF internet marketing. I've always called it the cult of personality, but in any group of internet marketers who are making decent money it is established fact that they can ALL make MORE money by cross promoting than they can by sniping each other. So this behavior turns to their best interests.
I liked this article on the blog even better though.
businessesgrow.com/2009/08/23/five-social-media-myths-that-must-stop-now/-
I could see that piece you like better being relevant to people who market. My thing is different.
I found the post in the OP via a tweet from a communications professor. It seems like a thing where the critical thinking among communications and business professors meets the culture of social media gurus online and is disappointed. Your point about money helps explain that gap.
Of course, the business and communications professors are also often involved in making money, but apparently their activities don't impinge on their discourse in the same way. -
But the audience of these gurus is so completely different from the audience of your professors. The professors approach the theoretical and market it to the studious. The gurus approach the practical and market it to the hopeful.
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They are less distinct than you think, at least among the professors who teach social media and have to turn to the web gurus themselves in search of viable material for courses. The old ivory tower stereotype won't do. I'm talking about long-time bloggers, twitter users, etc. They are not on the outside looking in. They are on the inside looking around and participating.
That's how I found this piece. Rich Becker, who you know from here and the BloggersUnite campaigns, is another example of this phenomenon. -
Is it really viable to "teach social media" at all? -
I haven't seen a syllabus, but it seems to me that it certainly should be, since as in any other area of communication, its use can be subjected to critical analysis. But you'd have to engage a communications prof. to learn more.
And how about journalism? They should teach it without addressing this new phenomenon, which is not just about presentation, networking, and marketing, but also sources?
In history there are now also digital history courses. There too I have not seen a syllabus, but they seem to have a social media component as well as deal with the possibilities and pitfalls of historical research and presentation using digital tools. In this world, though, there are different concerns than the marketers, but perhaps some overlap with the journalists.
All in all, for me college is about learning about communication, research, and critical thinking. We could continue to try to do that only with books, research papers, essays, and blue book exams, but I think we could address those same three areas in new media as well, especially since those new media entail new problems and opportunities for communication, research, and critical thought. -
I guess what I'm thinking is that in a sense, it's a lot like old-fashioned networking, and while many people have attempted to pass along the "secrets" of winning friends and influencing people over the years, those "lessons" have typically boiled down to the same sort of trite and obvious statements that people seem to be pointing to in this discussion in relation to social media.
The reason, I think, that people keep making money passing along "secrets" that aren't secrets at all is that the value is in the execution...and I'm not at all sure that the execution can be taught. -
dito the bit about people just keep on selling the same old secrets. I guess I had assumed that acredited professors would be something different from that. But my experience with the ivory towers is extremely limited.
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Hey Dane. I clicked on that link and it showed nothing was there. I did find the original post, and when I clicked on his reference to the myth post, it came up empty, too.
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I've always been amazed by the unoriginal, common sense info that gets retweeted and praised from so-called social media experts. It definitely appears more to be a case of who you are and who you know (or who knows YOU) rather than actual fresh and useful ideas.
It reminds me a bit of the various marketing day-seminar brochures I'm always getting at work. You read the topics and think, "These are so basic, anyone who doesn't already know the answers to them, is either very young or probably shouldn't be in the field."-
Or is just trying to break into the field? Remember that this is an easier and frequently more profitable segmentation in any niche.
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Well, that's probably what I should have said instead of "is either very young..."
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Gotcha
I can see that interpretation now. Sometimes the bone is thicker than the stuff it protects over here. -
It's early.
My brain is only mildly caffeinated itself. -
Jenn, don't you find this in virtually all areas of life? I know that a big obstacle for me when I started writing articles was the assumption that everyone already knew most of the stuff I had to say. It turned out not to have been true at all; what's "common sense" to some isn't even on the radar for others, and I'm continually surprised by the things that come as revelations to a fairly large number of people.
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Well, to some extent-- yes. I am often surprised at the stuff folks aren't necessarily viewing as just general common sense. But then again, so MANY of these marketing tips (online and off) directed to actual professionals in the field, are repeated so often, you DO have to wonder how anyone working in the industry for any length of time could have missed them.
I mean, if you were a doctor and saw an article that said, "It's good to take the patient's temperature and blood pressure" that article wouldn't have much credibility with anyone who had been doctoring for any length of time.
I see this similarly. -
Perhaps the difference is in that there is no licensing for marketing professionals as there is for doctors? Not so much that they don't have to pass a test, but that because there is no standard curriculum followed by a predictable test, there is really no clear "standard" regarding the basics. I think that marketing in particular is a field many people evolve into rather than specifically training for, and that it means something slightly different from company to company. In a sense, the term "marketing professional" is meaningless, because it can be applied to people in so many different sectors, broad or narrow, focused on branding and PR-type responsibilities or direct marketing in a quasi-sales capacity or advertising or search engine optimization or...
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Even without licensing, and taking in account the broader umbrella of marketing, people working in the same general position/tasks are going to have some commonalities in their knowledge base, though.
While I'd agree SOME folks being thrust into the profession from other areas are going need a leg up with somewhat more basic information, the "wisdom" imparted at many of these seminars does get pretty amazingly low-end.
I should be getting another one in the mail shortly. I'll try to remember to post excerpts. You'll get a chuckle, I bet.
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I might venture to say that this is simply another example of the way that our culture has moved away from the need for an actual "product". The bottom line is making money, and perhaps a degree of "success" in terms of recognition and glory, and few people daring to ask "But at the end of the day, what have you added?"
From the outside, it looks like it doesn't make sense because it's about something different than those critical thinkers are looking for. "Social media gurus" make six figure incomes from the comfort of their own homes, on their own schedules, largely by doing something they'd be doing anyway if they weren't getting paid. When you look at it that way, they absolutely know what they're doing.-
Hey six figures and all you need for clothes is a bathrobe ain't so bad.
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When I finally showed my wife what Twitter was all about she fell down because she was laughing so hard.
I agree with her.
Most social media is so stupid and useless that it is hard to understand how so many people, and the media, have been suckered into believing that it is important.
If I could make a semi-long term prediction it would be that most, if not all, of the social media that is around today will have died a slow painful and expensive death in the next 10 years.
I honestly believe that it is mostly hype and truly unimportant. It will take the advertisers a while to figure out that social media is this decades banner ad.-
I don't think any deaths will be slow, painful or expensive. Evolution occurs relatively quickly and easily in cyberspace. Social media as it exists today serves its purpose well enough that people are still using it for that purpose; it will change as needs and technology change. Meanwhile, it's helping a lot of people network, market their businesses, and in some cases make a boatload of money. It would be kind of silly for them to sit back and say "well, I'm only going to make good money from this for a year or two, so why bother?", wouldn't it? Particularly given that whatever comes along next probably won't be any longer-lived.
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I doubt very many people are making a "boatload" of money off of social media. The problem most of the social media companies are having is that they are making no money. Zero.
It doesn't take a genius, social or not, to figure out that a business that is spending money everyday and bringing in no money won't be around for very long.
MadameX your defense of the quick buck snake oil salesman is admirable. -
I don't know anything about "most social media companies"--I only know a few people who are heavily immersed in social media and know that all are making quite a lot of money right now. That's a fact, not a matter of "defense".
I'm also interested in the fact that I was talking social media outlets as a tool, yet you read that as a defense of "snake oil salesmen". Who are the snake oil salesmen, in your view? The owners and creators of Twitter and the like?
I'm also curious about where you get your information on the money social media companies are or are not bringing in. I would love to see that data. -
@MadameX If you were to read any of the business magazines, or tech news outlets on the web you would quickly learn that most social media sites make no money. When was the last time you saw an advertisement on Twitter? How do you think they bring money in? The answer is they don't. Not a single penny.
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Ah, you're talking about social media sites. Yes, I'm well aware that most of them aren't making any money. I don't see how that's pertinent to the discussion. My comments were about people and businesses USING social media to their advantage.
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Thanks. What a great article. It articulates something I've felt about social media for some time -- especially Twitter.
I'll bring in an example from my blog genre: At the beginning of the summer, there was a media push to talk about 'mom blogging'. Mom bloggers were brought in to the morning talk/news shows, put on lists of 'top 100' in magazines, and those who were labeled 'high-power bloggers' were given sweet corporate deals by Walmart, Disney, Sony, Johnson & Johnson and GE. There was a group of bloggers (those NOT included on the swag) who started publicly talking about the 'in crowd' as sell-outs. There was the potential for there to be a fundamental parting of the ways that divided parenting bloggers and writers from those mom-bloggers who do reviews and receive corporate sponsorship to pay the bills.
It didn't happen.
Even though issues were raised that are fundamental to the 'why are we here' 'why do we do this' questions, there was so much smoothing over done by those on the fringes of the 'in crowd' that the real debate kind of went away. The sycophants basically said that disclosure was the answer -- as long as a blogger was up-front about who was paying the bills, they were an 'honest' blogger.
Since that time, those who originally stood up for personal integrity have faded into the background. There is still good writing out there, but there is far more marketing chatter. When the author of the article wrote, "I’ve been astounded by how many people tweet, praise and re-blog anything uttered by the primary thought-leaders, no matter how insipid," I thought to myself, exactly.-
Great example.
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I just posted on the BlogCatalog blog about a flare-up involving this same issue that occurred about a week after this exchange. It's a great example of the way social networking works, even in unexpected ways.
I'm glad I read the article in the OP, Mark... it helped me to frame the piece as I was writing it. I'm glad you shared it.
Here's the link to the BlogCatalog piece:
www.blogcatalog.com/community/product-marketing-and-the-mom-blogs-what-have...
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I was really disappointed by the referenced book.
It is poorly written and while I know the author is decent guy and makes interesting presentations about the subject of social media I couldn't get through more than a few page, despite trying numerous times to continue, as it was disjointed and dull.
I came away feeling that it was a rush job designed to take advantage of timing rather than being done to truly add value to the body of thinking around social media, business and becoming a trust agent.-
Wow. Guess I'm glad I haven't bought it. The review from a trusted source and all, it was still on my list until this review form, ironically, an agent I trust.
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