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Let’s Stop Talking About Social Media Experts

I am tired of talking about how social media experts are ruining everything that is good and pure about social networking.

I mean, of course they are.

There are a million BS professions out there that are ruining something:

  • Reality TV producers
  • Televangelists
  • Romance novelists
  • Pop music artists
  • Paparazzi

Yes, these people bring down their entire broad industries through shoddy work, scummy tactics and rampant backstabbing.

What’s the real problem with all of these people though?

Someone is paying them!

Some jerk is paying that social media guru (who is giving you blog posts like “Ten tips to shoot to the top of Digg”) either on a contract or a full time gig to keep sustaining them in their practice. Or they are unemployed and just saying they are an expert until they find a real gig.

So if you want to know why these folks keep persisting, it is because someone is paying their mortgage and light bills. People don’t do this crap for free for too long.

You want to know the real deal?

If you want to be useful and successful in social media, you have to be useful and successful in society. That means contributing useful things to your community. That means not doing shady things as a means to work your way into the hearts and minds of your audience. That means creating useful ideas and products that don’t require automated Digg submitters, blackhat SEO and crappy Twitter accounts.

* * * * *

Most of all, it is about educating and involving yourself with social media. That’s why companies who get it don’t care about social media experts. When they get it, they end up caring less about social media “rockstars” and more about people who are willing to talk to their former, current and future customers in a way that makes sense and is authentic.

So while it is easy to get stuck in the trap of complaining about social media gurus, let’s do the hard thing and just make them go away by stopping their cash supply. That’s the hard way. Any comparison to cockroaches is purely coincidental too.