Social Media Expert, Social Media Consultant – who is/isn’t?
Lately, there’s more buzz and polemic on the topic of social media expert. It’s a topic of choice in the SMM sphere along with who owns social media, how you measure it and so on…
The debate has been around for a while but, as illustrated by the chart below, there’s an increased level of conversations about Social Media Expert in 2009 (as measured in the pool of +1000 SMM blogs we read on and off at eCairn):
The good news is that more marketers are moving into social media, which, we all know is a bit of a mess. Thus they need more help. The bad news is that they’re few experts out there and they may not even call themselves expert.
Some good lists of characteristics to look after in a so called expert:
- Kyle offers his 25 steps to choosing a SM consultant
- David has a similar one
- Dawn has more
Interesting: According to Gladwell in Outliers, it takes about 10,000 hours of work at any one specialty — which equates to about 10 years of solid experience — to reach a superior level.
I translate that as “experience is key” – no surprise here.
