Most of the blogs, most of the expert columns from “social media” experts read like excerpts from Cosmo Magazine, with titles that read “10 Ways to Engage People on Twitter,” and “7 Ways How to Show Facebook Fans You Love Them,” or “15 Sexy Ways to Instagram.” Almost every single article reads exactly the same, with general “how-to” information that has been rehashed thousands of times in similar columns and blogs. About 100 times a day, a social media expert declares that in order to reach people on Twitter, you need to use photos – something that the most basic of teenagers with a Twitter account are quite aware of.
On a daily basis someone with a small business tells me the same story: “I hired a social media expert, who told me that they would improve my business, but in the end all I had was a bunch of useless likes on Facebook from people in India, and fake followers on Instagram.”
That’s the problem with the social media industry: Almost all the people who are writing about it are essentially doing nothing more than taking money from people, and then buying tons of followers for the business to make it look like they are doing work. These “experts” usually have absolutely no background in marketing, technology, or any sort of experience except writing their blog and buying twitter followers.
Let’s take “Dan” a self-proclaimed social media expert I never have read before. A friend of mine mentioned him to me today as an example of a fake in the social media industry who know absolutely nothing whatsoever about the product that he is talking about. I use the name “Dan” because that’s his name.
He claims to be one of the top experts in social marketing, and his blog has thousands and thousands of retweets, likes, and posts.
Yet a quick examination of his blog shows that it’s not even in the top 100,000 sites on Alexa.com, nor even shows up with almost any inbound links of relevance. In fact, despite his site showing Thousands of Tweets on his blog, a quick look on his twitter account shows thousands of fake followers and a zero engagement rate on most of his tweets. Yet, he’s the “expert” on Twitter and social media.
The other problem with the social media marketing industry is that most of the people aren’t just not really that knowledgeable, but they are taking advice from the vast majority of “non-experts” in the industry. They are also competing in an industry that is 90% completely lost itself, with no idea what is happening on. They are getting some advice from equally lost people on how to make a great instagram account, while some 16 year old girl with absolutely no “expert” guiding her has managed to get 1.5M followers.
So what to do about hiring a social media expert, one who actually will help your company grow and succeed?
1) Ask to see examples of his clients, and then after he shows you, ask to speak to them about their experience. He will most likely show you one that look really good on Facebook, Twitter, but might have had to hire someone else, or have less than a positive experience with hiring him.
2) Look for engagement level on their twitter feed about social media and marketing. If they can’t engage people in social media, they are likely just as lost as you are about how to use social media marketing. I’m the first to admit that I really, really don’t like most of social media and frankly have systems that automate it. It’s also why I recommend various friends for consulting jobs in social media, because I don’t like to pretend that despite having some great engagement on Facebook and other forums, that I am an “expert” on social media marketing.
3) Look for signs that she may be cheating. Simply put, if she is located in the US talking about social media and half of the readers are from China or India, he is buying cheap retweets and likes in order to make it look like she is more popular than she really is.
What’s the take away here? Social Media Experts in general are royal scumbags and liars. Most of what they “teach” is readily available everywhere else, and frankly a $20 book about social media marketing can provide you more information than hiring a $20,000 “expert.”