These are my personal opinions and not those of my employer, oh hang on…
Lots of people are now social media experts in Ireland. Twitter is overflowing with them. I got reminded of this by Fergal’s post. Are these social media experts all experts or are they jesters?
Photo owned by time4coffee (cc)
Some things to consider:
Are they a jester because they are now twitter consultants, yet are on it just three months? This tool is handy for finding that out.
Are they a jester because they tell companies to follow the influencers?
Be they on blogs, Facebook or Twitter. Social media means everyone is an influencer because everyone is connected to the rest of the world in a few steps. Gunning for people with good blog traffic, good blog subscribers and thousands of Twitter followers means you will miss the ones at the edge that start the trickle that start the flood. Go for quality, not quantity.
Are they a jester because three months ago they were Web 2.0 experts?
9 months ago they were business coaches, 18 months ago they were business strategists and two months time they are going to be cloud computing experts?
Are they a jester because they call Twitter users Tweeps and use all these new names?
Using made up words can sometimes be a sign that they can’t evangelise themselves in existing business segments. I’m not too comfortable myself even with social media, beats Web 2.0 though.
Are they jesters because they insist on “managing” your presence?
Why don’t they trust you to run your Facebook, Twitter or blog?
Are these social media ninjas jesters because they are afraid to offend in case they might lose a lead?
Standing your ground means some people won’t like you. Reputation management is not about making everyone like you.
Are they a jester because they are also a coach?
Aren’t coaches people that work in sports or those that tell politicians the best way to lie? A coach is someone who trains someone but never lets them out of their control, right? A coach works with zombies, no?
Are they a jester because they write bullshit posts like this?
Hiiiiiiiiiii!
I’d love to be the Jester, except that no one finds me funny, they all stop laughing when I come into the room.
I like this comments thing of to the side here. Don’t know about the paint job.
half of me wants to get really good at jesting so I can go and make a lot of money out of it and help my kids school. The other half knows it’s really pretty easy, and people should do it themselves.
Can I make some money – for a little while at least??
xx
Problem is, these experts/jesters will read this because it’s a Mulley post, but they won’t see themselves in it!
I worry when anybody appends the word “expert” to their job title
Have to say I agree with much of this.
This whole dilution of the term “expert” started with daytime telly… when Richard and Judy started trotting out “experts” on anything and everything. It was all downhill from there, and social media has just exacerbated things.
Case in point: when I was in college at Liverpool doing Marine Biology one of my classmates — a mature student in his first year of an undergrad course — got on Richard and Judy as a Marine Biology expert commenting on the environmental impact of oil spills in the Persian Gulf during the first Iraq war. Much like many of today’s social media “experts” he was making it up as he went along. It was priceless.
Not sure I’d use the term jester though… because most of these jokers are far from funny. Entertaining though… definitely entertaining ;-).
And there’s nothing wrong with making money genuinely helping businesses to engage through social media, or get to grips their online marketing. As long as you’re focus is on adding value, and steering them around the countless pitfalls (often the one’s you’ve fallen into yourself) rather than ripping them off.
Of course, whether or not you’re classed as a jester could just be down to the type of hat you wear.
(Oops… somehow this comment ended up much longer than I intended it to be)