Beware the Social Media Guru’s

This post is actually earlier than expected, as I wanted to give more foundations to the what is Social Media? post I kicked off with but I thought I might as well hit this whilst it is fresh in my mind.

I’m feeling very passionate this morning, so there may well be swearing in this post. I’m not gonna apologise for that – I just wanted to warn you.

With Social Media being such a “hot topic” right now – it stands to reason you’re gonna get a few dodgy people out there trying to sell the new Snake Oil 2.0 so it pays to be vigilant.

I’m not gonna jump on the whole “guru” bashing that I’ve seen recently. To be honest, I feel that some of those posts that are attempting to bash Social Media Guru’s are smoke screens to say “well hey, I know what I’m talking about so use me instead”.

Look, there are people out there that get Social Media, use it with fantastic success and the main reason? Well, they don’t use it as a marketing channel – they are themselves, transparent, share their interests and passions and the bonus is they get people who wanna buy from them.

Does that make them a guru? Well yes and no. Yeah they have the success from it, but you need to think back – just cos Social Media is the new black, doesnt mean to say it’s new. After all, its all about relationships – there is nothing new in that. It just seems fresh as so many companies forgot how to communicate with the people that make them what they are.

The advent of mass mailing just made everything as impersonal as you can get. One size does not fit all. This fuelled the broadcast mentality further and made companies both big and small – lazy.

We – as humans are getting fed up with this shit – well in fact, we’re blocking it out more and more. The main reason it may get through to us to take action is via a subconcious level and habit. You know – “Lets hit them with our brand and logo a million times and they will buy” Good luck with that in the future.

So these guys have done well in social media because of who they are – and the main knowledge they have is about the technologies that help them connect with people from all over the world in a more intimate way. Also, if they tout themself as a guru, its a bit pretencious to say the least. You’ll find that most of the “good guys” say they know their stuff and not afraid to say it, but they don’t give themself a title of guru.

Social media is not a magic bullet or “just take two a day and you will have customers coming out your ears” – it’s all about using traditional values with new technologies. The results of customers, followers or anything else should be the bonus from doing this – not the aim.

You should be passionate enough about whatever topic it is you wanna share via social media to wanna do it for free. I tell you now – I love this shit enough that I would do it for free (although please allow some slack as I have a mortgage ) Only the other night, I was giving someone a hand with keyword research over Skype, without a single thought of money exchanging hands. The satisfaction for me is giving people a helping hand and seeing it florish from there.

Am I an SEO/Social Media guru? No. Am I an addict of this stuff? Yes. Does that make me more qualified than the next person to advise? I’m gonna be bold and say yeah – why not? I do this cos I wanna and I love it, not cos its the latest way of raking in the moolah.

Also, what you will find is the social media dudes and dudetts out there havent been doing it that long (in the grand scheme of things) – so don’t expect to see years of experience on the CV. What you wanna look for is the passion and knowledge and more than likely you found them via social media channels. Coincidence? No. They’re out there all the time as they wanna do it.

Think PR/journalists will be a safe bet? Think again. Unfortunately PR training is still lacking in exposing the students to social media channels and how you would need to approach this medium compared to the normal “look at me” type PR. It’s certainly putting the “Personal” back into PR. The quicker, good structured training and mind set gets pushed through the education system the better.

You also don’t wanna hear from someone “Yeah we’ll set up Twitter and Facebook for you” and off they go. Any one can do that – its the fact you need proper advice on how to do it to get the most out of the channel. You want someone to advise you on how you can create campaigns that get people involved, excited and make them feel valued by you. Again, the result should primarily be more about engagement rather than sales. Sales will come later from it so don’t worry about that.

You also need someone with knowledge and ideas about how to handle customer service – yes people use Twitter and Facebook for help and really appreciate a personal response. Someone with customer service experience is handy though not essential. If you have people that handle your customer service – get them involved and heavily. This should be seen as an addition to their role.

I strongly feel that the 5 plus years experience I had in customer services has really helped out with how I approach things within the social media sphere.

What happens if people diss you online? Firstly, if you ignore, or try and censor this stuff – you’re a fool. You’re getting free customer satisfaction (or not) surveys completely unsolicited and if you don’t use that info to improve your business, then how have you survived so long?

Don’t hide away from it. You look a bigger idiot than if you meet it head on with a nice personal response of acknowledging the situation, apologising and (god forbid) rewarding them for their feedback. Remember the same crappy line you hear when you phone up places? “Your feedback is important to us” Yeah right. Well how about you do something about it then?

People are gonna say stuff about you and there’s nothing you can do about it other than use that vital information to improve your business. Remember the customers? You know – the people that actually line your pockets and allow you to earn a living – well start ignoring them and treating them badly and that stuff is gonna spread a million times quicker than it used to so get used to caring about your customers again.

Wow – I really needed to get something off my chest!

OK, I’m gonna leave you with those thoughts and let you check out a video that got passed onto me by an old work colleague. Slightly concerning when he said “I saw this and thought of you”. Now I’m hoping he meant that he thought I would appreciate it due to the content, rather than he thought I was one of the characters in it!

The video does have swearing but you’ve made it this far unscathed I must say I had to chuckle but watch out – there will be people out there with this mind set.

As always, feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments. If you disagree – thats cool, go for it. I’m not always right!

Enjoy!

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