It seems like people always like to jump on the bandwagon of hating someone. Sometimes it’s gurus, sometimes it’s bloggers and sometimes it’s “social media experts.” I seem to constantly see people bashing “social media experts” on Facebook. I’ve seen blog posts how you should NEVER hire a “social media expert.” I get it. I understand why people in the internet marketing field hate “social media experts.” After all, how hard is it to write a blog post, setup a wordpress blog, update a Facebook page or Tweet? It’s not very hard for a seasoned internet marketing vet which makes it look like “social media experts” are just scraping the bottom of the barrel and taking advantage of people.
Step back for a second and look at social media from an outsiders perspective. Imagine your the V/P of Marketing at a local bank, you keep hearing about how everyone is on Facebook & Twitter. You want a piece of the action but don’t know where to start. You don’t know how to effectively manage a Facebook page and quite frankly, you don’t have time for it. You’re not going to assign the task to some random teller you have working at the bank and you don’t want to do it yourself so you’re stuck between a rock & a hard place. You have 2 options. You either risk having some menial employee screw up your bank’s reputation with something stupid they say on social media or you hire a “social media expert.”
Yea, most “social media experts” have never sold a damn thing in their lives. Some can barely write an intelligent sentence. Just because there are crappy players in the field doesn’t mean that all “social media experts” are bad. Not everyone mows their own lawn, not everyone does their own book keeping, not everyone cleans their own office. They use outside companies to do these tasks even though they aren’t particularly hard. In business, time is money and sometimes it’s better to pay someone else to do your dirty work because it’s more efficient and requires less involvement.
I can’t say every company needs a “social media expert” or “social media agency,” but some do. Some companies don’t even know where to start. Some companies need guidance. Some companies just don’t have the manpower. Every situation is different so give the “social media experts” a break because there is a place for every type of service if it fills a need.
That’s what the entire PR field exists for. Hire a PR person. 10 minutes of their day can be spent doing social media stuff.
@Nick – I see a “PR” person as an offline version of what we call a Social Media Expert. They both serve the same job. More and more PR firms are moving into the online space though that’s for sure. So technically they are they same thing just one currently spends more time online…
Actually there’s three options u can have some sort of service like sponsored tweets peddle ur shiznit and do a little auto subitter action dripfeedage lol
I think many companies have social media experts just because everyone else has one. They might not even need one, but it’s the thing to do. Since it’s not a hard job most small business owners could do it themselves if they wanted to.
This is a great point. Especially when you say “not everybody mows their own lawn.” These companies want something done now, and they want it done right. They are willing to put out the money to have this done. If they don’t, they run the risk of putting out an ineffective social media campaign and the process was all for nothing anyway.
[…] I Will Never, Ever Hire A “Social Media Expert” and AdHustler wrote a blog post called In Defense of “Social Media Experts”. The fact of the matter is that you should never hire a “social media expert” or anyone […]
Ad Hustler,
I totally agree. Something else that the ‘haters’ don’t take into account is that many tasks we consider “easy”, like setting up a Facebook page, or getting followers on twitter, are the sort of tasks that many small and medium size business owners, administrators, and managers, don’t want to spend 10 minutes, or more, trying to figure out how to do it.
I outsource a lot of tasks that I could do myself, but have no interest in doing.
In the end, most of the haters are part of the online community who take social media knowledge for granted. In a sense, they view social media consulting as a “cheap” profession. But, the fact is, social media knowledge isn’t cheap. It’s worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. That’s how the market works. Some of the haters are jealous of the fact that they have the same sort of knowledge social media experts have, but haven’t made any money off their knowledge.
I’ve been using social media tools for years, but even I have to consult “experts” on a regular basis. Just because you’re on Facebook doesn’t mean you know how to milk it for all it’s worth. In fact, you probably don’t.