Comments on: Let’s Go Hating On Social Media Expert Douchebags

By: Ruud Hein

Ruud Hein — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 21:04:09 +0000

In reply to Yomar.

Thanks for the comment, Yomar. I enjoyed it 🙂

By: Yomar

Yomar — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 19:37:53 +0000

Mr. Hein, this article is SO on-point. Interestingly enough, I’ve been on a bit of a rant about similar issues. It’s amazing the silly stuff our fellows do in their crazy competitive ways.

One of the problems I see is how people treat online marketing. Niches work but not for the reasons most think. Like you said, it’s easy to target a marketplace in it’s infancy because you can claim some “pioneer credit” but that does not mean you have your client’s best interests in mind.

Sadly, this makes us all look bad and devalues things like SEO, social media, and other “soft services”. The thing that is tricky about it all is that working with any B2B service provider requires a leap of faith to some degree, even when you have a trial period, but this only makes potential partners and clients very jaded, hesitant, and paranoid…

I can speak volumes about all of this and, really, I have to catch myself when I come off as being full of hot-air, preachy, or “suspect”.. It happens. Sometimes I’ll read a bio one of my cohorts puts up and I shake my head, because I know they may send off the wrong signals to the right people.. And it can be painful.

Anyway, I linked to this article in one of my recent guest blogs. This is really good stuff here and I hope you follow up on it. 8)

By: Ruud Hein

Ruud Hein — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 19:55:55 +0000

In reply to Disa Johnson.

Omg, Disa! So much fun to have you here!

I like your insight in popularity is everything; there seems to be a lot of truth there. It’s as if the distinctions between popularity fame expertise are lacking.

By: Ruud Hein

Ruud Hein — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 19:52:06 +0000

In reply to Mary McKnight.

Spot on, Mary. I know my dentist wouldn’t call herself a “dental expert” 🙂

I agree any marketers should be as familiar as possible with all tools and platforms. I compare it to knowing some HTML when you’re into SEO. You might know what the HTML for a link or a title tag looks like but that doesn’t make you a web designer. Likewise being on Twitter and experimenting with Facebook (to name but two) aren’t the same as being a social media marketer.

Teaching/warning clients how to spot the douchebag from the real thing — that’s indeed what it’s all about.

By: Ruud Hein

Ruud Hein — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 19:48:49 +0000

In reply to Rick LaPoint.

I remember the whole Desktop Publishing wave too 🙂

I see your point on the case of the abandoned blog of the social media expert. Still, it strikes me that people like Tamar Weinberg put a Li Evans put a lot of work into knowing how stuff work; and I don’t want to call them douchebags.

Social media marketing is a specialization; like plumbing, anyone can do it but that doesn’t make everyone a plumber 🙂

By: Disa Johnson

Disa Johnson — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:17:52 +0000

I had fun reading the original and Tweeting about it. I mean scheduling the tweet about it. The tweets feed the Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn profiles and it all mostly works together with SEO as a profession. We’ve seen all this before. Blogs are just guestbooks with articles instead of a lonely “Sign our guestbook page!”

Social Media douchbags are the ones who spend time writing books about the site features and promoting their personal brand but pivoting the topic to generic company brand to “speak to” those who would buy the book for their marketing bookshelf. I haven’t seen much new in years but a lot of attention paid to the latest kid on the block. Facebook beats Google in traffic now, and it ripped off LinkedIn.

What the Social Media douchbags have correct is that popularity, not brilliance, is everything these days.

Disa

By: Mary McKnight

Mary McKnight — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 22:07:32 +0000

I get suspicious of anyone that calls themselves an expert that have a series of letters after their name like MD, JD, – heck I’d settle for a So and So III but experts come and go. Social Media like SEO is just a form of marketing – any decent marketer should have a handle on these disciplines and the tools associated with them. Any decent marketer should be agile enough to grow with technologies and know how and when to hire the right people to get the job done. I personally, would not consider my self an expert in anything – it kind of says you have stopped learning and I don’t think marketing is something you can stop learning about. I’m never impressed with people who feel the need to label themselves rockstars, gurus, ninjas, or jedis at some task within an overall discipline. Demonstrable knowledge is always more powerful than crafty wordsmithing. There’s a lot of twucked up twit in social media – but there is a lot of great things that come from it and the discerning eye can weed out the douchebag from the certified expert pretty quickly!
.-= Mary McKnight recently posted: How to Tell Which Celebrities Sell Brands Best =-.

By: Rick LaPoint

Rick LaPoint — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 20:38:46 +0000

Hi Ruud,

I remember when Desktop Publishing first hit. It was a lot of fun and pretty easy to do and everyone wanted to do it. Out of nowhere, consultants, experts, and gurus poured out of the woodwork like they were fleeing a bug bomb.

I recently visited the site of a self-proclaimed Social Media Expert. Their Alexa was 1.6 Million (won’t argue Alexa here), their last Post was 3 months prior, and they only had one or two Comments. Seems to me they should have a lot more Socializing going on there, but maybe that’s just my own naiveté.

This kind of thing is also fun and easy, yet there is still so much to learn because the subject itself is People! It’s not the technology as much as the psychology and demographics–at least they way I see it.

Any media platform must be used to approach People in the manner that want and expect that Platform to be utilized. Stepping outside the box is OK, to a point, but creative can become obnoxious with very little effort.

Rick
.-= Rick LaPoint recently posted: The Logic of Emotional Motivators =-.