Do We Need a System for Validating Social Media Experts?

A few days ago, a friend asked me if I’d ever heard of Person X.  I hadn’t.  Neither had he, until Person X contacted him regarding an upcoming social media workshop that Person X is organizing for Pittsburgh’s newspaper industry.  Considering my friend and I are two of the 30+ organizers of PodCamp Pittsburgh — and that we’ve been doing it for 4 years now — we found it odd that someone we’d never heard of was purporting to offer organized social media instruction to an entire industry.

A little Googling revealed that Person X has a Twitter account with 20 followers and hasn’t updated since September.  Obviously, this trips my bullshit detector.  Not that these alone are signs of a socially inept person, since plenty of people don’t have time for Twitter.  But not many people at the “teaching an industry how to use social media” level are this lax in their social media footprint, either.

Of course, what you or I may detect as bullshit may go completely unnoticed by the very people most in need of a social media education.  Or, in other words, we’re at risk of the field being dominated by people who know nothing, because their target audience knows even less.

One Man’s Expert Is Another Man’s Pool Boy

Personally, I don’t care if you want to call yourself an expert, guru, thought leader or tastemaker.  Irritating though you may be, your success or failure will be determined not by your personal branding but whether those you’ve fooled into believing you once are willing to pay you to be fooled again.  Sooner or later, you run out of suckers.

So, do we need some kind of social media expert verification system?  I don’t think so.

First of all, any such system would be inherently distrusted by anyone who feels s/he knows at least as much as the people handing out the certificates.  As much as we all claim social media is a democracy, we also understand it’s a meritocracy — and if you need a special web badge to prove your legitimacy, it’s only because your expertise doesn’t already speak for itself.

Second, those of us who believe in our own legitimacy already understand what that legitimacy looks like.  We can spot the frauds and douchebags by the things they say and do, and our BS detector is reliable enough to keep us from lending too much credence to those whose actions suggest they may not be deserving of our greater attention.  In short, a degree won’t convince me you that know what you’re talking about, but your portfolio could.

Lastly, any system that confers legitimacy can still be scammed and exploited by those willing and able to do so.  And if you’re already inflating your reputation in order to fool potential customers, fabricating legitimacy isn’t much extra work.

You Can’t Tell the Hornswagglers Apart Without a Scorecard

On the other hand, an expert verification system would be useful for anyone who can’t tell the tutors from the charlatans because they don’t even know what questions they should be asking.  Since those of us who already make a living in the industry can’t even agree on what kinds of ROI we should use to measure our own successes, how could anyone not in the industry know which benchmarks to use as they seek this same knowledge?

Of course, none of this would be a problem if the people soliciting instruction from social media “experts” were willing to pay for it.  But because so many of the curious are either small business owners or employees at companies where all new expenses must be resoundingly justified, it’s understandable that these folks would go looking for bargain-basement education in order to cut costs.  And those bargain basements are where the film-flam men tend to camp out.  (Not that “penthouse-level” instruction is always much better, since penthouse rent means someone has to pay for it.  But at least you have the option of paying $1000 to a guy whose name you may have heard before vs. paying $49.95 to someone you’ll never hear from again.)

Here’s Looking at You, Expert

Meanwhile, if you are someone who could reasonably be considered an instruction-level social media practitioner, and you’re wondering why you’re not landing the speaking gigs and webinar crowds that these relative know-nothings seem to be enjoying at your expense, maybe it’s because they’re better self-promoters than you are.  Which is ironic, since social media is almost always, at its root, an exercise in self-promotion.  It’s just that those of us who see the field as “something more” are also reluctant to reduce it to the level of an infomerical in order to get ourselves jobs.

Tags: audience, bullshit, common sense, expert, honesty, perception, Social Media