Everyone Is A Social Media Consultant: A Different Take
I was just reading this post complaining about the overuse of the term “social media consultant”. And Michael is right, people are very eager to pronounce themselves thus, but I think there’s more to it than simple egotism or self-promotion, I think they have a point. I think his titular assertion is true, everyone is a social media consultant.
Promotion via social media isn’t terribly difficult - time consuming, but not difficult. As self-styled gurus say ad nauseam, the trick is to ‘join the conversation’. And that is the only trick. People don’t want to be advertised at, they want to interact with a company, and more importantly, with a person. They want help with their problems, but only when they ask for it. And they want help from someone they trust, so companies need to give themselves a face, a reputation. They should communicate for communication’s sake, even when it doesn’t help their business. Because it does help their business.
People tend to be puzzled by the fact that companies can’t work out how to use social media to their advantage, because it is so simple to anyone who uses it without an agenda, it doesn’t seem to be knowledge at all, but common sense.
If companies would just listen to someone, anyone, about how to interact with users, they would quickly learn how to properly leverage social media, because every one of us is a social media consultant.
Hey Wyatt, thanks for reading my post and responding.
What you’ve said in this post is much more valuable than the ’social media consultants’ I described in my post. I am describing people who add no value. As a consumer I agree with you 100% that no one wants to be talked at (inbound vs outbound marketing), but many of these ‘consultants’ have no idea what’s going on and that translates over to the business owners.
This is why there are so many companies on Twitter who just, essentially, scream updates at their followers. Why? Because they paid some kid to tell them how to use “the twitter.”
I think anyone wanting to be taken seriously when consulting in this field should at least change their title. We need something a tad douchier anyways, how about ‘New Media Strategist?’
Hi Mike, thanks for visiting.
I do see what you mean, these companies must be getting their ideas somewhere. Maybe the thing is to ask anyone who _doesn’t_ claim to be a ‘new media strategist’.
I like the term, too; a title needs to be entirely devoid of meaning to sound important, and that’s getting pretty close.