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Is Social Media Expertise a Real Skill?
No comments · Posted by Johnny Malloy in Social Media
I haven’t posted in a while and I am very late to the conversation on this topic but I wanted to add my two cents to the discussion over the value of social media expertise.
The latest version of the conversation started last May with a rather angry post about the uselessness of a social media expertise by Peter Shankman. Rand Fishkin had a good reply that does a good job presenting a different point of view. I tend to agree with Rand, both in this case and most of the time, but I’d like to add another dimension to the discussion.
Marketing and promotions are, and have always been, very social concepts. Being able to connect with people and explain your value requires a certain ability to hold conversations and get people to listen. And of course I don’t think Peter Shankman would deny this. I think he is expressing frustration over the fact that some people just want to use Facebook but don’t really know how.
But there ARE people who know how to use Facebook. And Twitter. And other forms of social media. And they legitimately know how to use it BETTER than others. Knowing how often to tweet, what’s the right time of day, what message will resonate with which audience. These types of things are actually measurable aspects of talent. A true skill that can be used to generate revenue.
It may be that being social (and through social media) is somewhat of a natural skill. If so, it is a talent that cannot necessarily be taught. This is opposition to the concept of a business model or a value proposition which can easily be learned. In this light, having the social media expert is not only a good idea, it’s potentially required if you want to survive against competition in an online marketplace. First you hire the guy that knows how to promote and engage online. Then you teach them your business.
Of course it’s not that easy. How does one identify a social media expert? If I am looking to hire someone to help with online marketing, I am asking interview questions about their social media prowess: how many personal followers do you have? How have you grown social footprints for your businesses? Where do see Google + fitting in? Etc…
Here’s an interesting experiment to grow your business: make a post to reddit asking all karma whores if they want a job in marketing for your company and weed through the responses. These guys are literally experts at getting people to listen to them. Maybe they won’t mind getting paid to do so?
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