I happened to see an article, which triggered a topic that I wanted to write about for a long time. I am sure if you are following news and blogs you have faced a large number of silly self declared titles such as: “Social Media Guru” , Social Media Master, Social Media Prophet, Social Media Mastermind, Social Media Revolutionist, Social Media Philosopher, Social Media Pioneer, Social Media Thinker and even Social Media God!
I like to be simple, brief and straight forward; I don’t say most of the guys who tag the above titles to themselves are idiots, but I guess most of them think their audience are idiots.
Mel Ramos Superman (Photo credit: Marshall Astor – Food Fetishist)
Dozens of logical and technical facts are supporting my statement. I try to mention few of them below:
– As it’s sharply highlighted in this article ¹: “How could anyone be an expert in something that’s still evolving, still undefined?” Honestly that’s a very enlightening question, Have you seen the social media definition in dictionaries? how about Wikipedia? do we think these definitions are solid? Well, I personally don’t think so, and when we are still trying to define the meaning of a phenomenon we are far from having tons of social media gurus.
– Social Media as its being seen today concerns many fields and subject, Someone who likes, tries or performs in social media must have great experience in journalism, marketing, social science, analytical skills, deep knowledge and clear vision on the internet and web technology and tens of more different skills. The expertise in social media is as complex as social media itself.
– Social Media has been established and being developed as the result of nothing but science and technology, using the words such as guru, prophet, god etc is a serious case of misunderstanding.
– An expert, a true pioneer, an inventor or an entrepreneur would never disclose his/her plans and ideas to gain more followers on Twitter. Dose Mark Zuckerberg has any time or motive for silly show offs when he was creating Facebook? At that time there was no Twitter but I never heard or seen Zuckerberg has made such buzz on Orkut and Friendster, If today anyone who retweets Mashable’s posts is social media expert then Zuckerberg should be worshiped as the God.
I never seen a person as successful as real pioneers tries to justify his/her knowledge by tags such as I mentioned above. To get more proof for this statement please refer to this TED video and see the way Wright brothers made the flight as one of the greatest achievements by humans, ever. Yet see how Most people don’t know about”Samuel Pierpont Langley” who also wanted to fly failed. To get more idea of what I’m talking about please see this video again on TED, “Ernesto Sirolli” says: the problem with communities and public meeting is that entrepreneurs and smart people won’t attend i.e. it was like this then, and it is like this now, Those who are really creating something influential usually don’t make any publicity or noise. The noise or publicity usually being created after something is built and succeed, even then the creators don’t bother for publicity as there are so many people have nothing to do but to retweet other guy’s success.
– In any project confidentiality has its own weight, but its weight in social media marketing and PR projects is much heavier than traditional marketing or web development projects, in social media marketing sometimes the objectives are achievable only if no one ( audience and competitors) realize it is a marketing campaign. Therefore unknown introverts might be most successful social media marketers.
– Social Media has created lots of possibilities for people, audience and customers to find out the truth, at least more truth than ever. People read share, like, discuss and eventually judge, If two years back by being opportunists some guys named themselves the above tags now they face a crowed which is being more educated about social media day by day. This fast education transforms what they call expertise into social skills, If a how-to for doing a function on Facebook was so popular 1 year back, today it’s only a social skill which is adopted or discovered by many ordinary users whether they have seen that how-to or not. The author of that author is respected but can’t be called social media master.
– We are living in a world that everything is being crowed sourced, problems, issues, tips, tricks, solutions etc. Today the crowed itself is leader, master or prophet. If someone wants to capture these titles he has not realized the true power of social media and its era.
I personally, hope to waste less attention on unnecessary noises and be sharp enough to detect the real social media phenomenons and influencers.
Please Note:
I truly respect all the great and respected people who work hard and invest their time and talent to create a better world via social media and related technologies, This article won’t address to any person particularly, what I wrote is my general and humble opinion.
1- I Declare Open Season On Social Media Experts: Closed by: Sam Fiorella
Pooriast 