I recently came across the following article from Peter Shankman. Peter is a renowned marketer, and is among the many online authors who I try to keep tabs on.
Within the IT industry (and perhaps within out society) we have a deep fascination with shiny new baubles. Who could forget such classics as the paperless office, the telecoms boom (and bust), the dot.com boom (and bust) and dare I say the $43 Billion Dollar NBN. These baubles come in all different shapes, sizes, and costs but share a few things in common:
- they are hyped as the next big thing;
- they tend to over promise and under deliver;
- so called “experts” are popping up everywhere and*;
- there are a few stand-out successes, but many failures;
- the return on investment is ambiguous (to say the least)
Gartner offer a model called the Hype Cycle to describe the adoption process for new technologies.
Where would you position Social Media applications and their use in business on this cycle?
Enough of my thoughts here is the article form Peter Shankman
Why I Will Never, Ever Hire A “Social Media Expert”
I was going to call this article “All ‘Social Media Experts’ Need To Go Die In A Fire,” but I figured I should be nicer than that.
But my title stands. If you call yourself a social media expert, don’t even bother sending me your resume.
No business in the world should want one on their team. They shouldn’t want a guru, rockstar or savant, either. If you have a social media expert on your payroll, you’re wasting your money.
Being an expert in social media is like being an expert at taking the bread out of the refrigerator. You might be the best bread-taker-outer in the world, but you know what? The goal is to make an amazing sandwich, and you can’t do that if all you’ve done in your life is taken the bread out of the fridge.
Social media is just another facet of marketing and customer service. Say it with me. Repeat it until you know it by heart. Bind it as a sign upon your hands and upon thy gates. Social media, by itself, will not help you.
We’re making the same mistakes that we made during the DotCom era, where everyone thought that just adding the term .com to your corporate logo made you instantly credible. It didn’t. If that’s all you did, you emphasized even more strongly how pathetic your company was. You weren’t “building a new paradigm while shifting alternate ways of focusing customers on the clicks and mortar of an organizational exchange.” No — you were simply an idiot who’d be out of business in six months.
Ready for the ultimate kicker? We still haven’t learned! We got thirsty again, and are drinking the same ten-year-old Kool-Aid without so much as asking for ice. Rather than embracing this new technology and merging it with what we’ve learned already, we’re throwing off our clothes and running naked in the rain, waving our hands in the air, sure that this time it’ll be different, because this time it’s better!
“It’s not about building a website anymore! It’s so much cooler! It’s about Facebook, and fans, and followers, and engagement, and influence, and…”
Will you please shut up before you make me vomit on your shoes?
[important]IT’S ABOUT GENERATING REVENUE THROUGH SOLID MARKETING AND STELLAR CUSTOMER SERVICE, JUST LIKE IT’S BEEN SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME.[/important]
Read the complete article at: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-i-will-never-ever-hire-a-social-media-expert-2011-5#ixzz1QX3i37ln
Let me know your thoughts…
