I recently turned down $21,000 dollars to speak and conduct workshops on using Twitter & Facebook as a marketing strategy. I feel like I made the right decision, but it’s irrelevant.
From a hotel room (echo & all), while on a consulting engagement in Boulder, Colorado, I discuss:
- Self-Appointed Social Media Experts.
- How credibility is irrelevant today.
What, if any, credibility should a paid speaker discussing social media have to be perceived as credible?
Weigh-in on this topic by voicing your comments in the comment section below.
** After publishing this post, Tim Berry, Founder of Palo Alto Software had this guidance to share on his blog.
I think it’s too bad you didn’t take the gig, Matthew, because if you had the conference would have been much better off. I just tweeted about this podcast — can I call it a podcast? — because I think you do a great job here of bringing up a very interesting phenomenon. Expertise is conferred by the conference organizers, in this case, and the attendees take that for granted.
Brave new world. But I’m pretty sure of this: next time, take the money, present what you know to the people, and everybody will be better off.
I hereby proclaim you to be a social media expert. If only I could remember my high-school Latin…
Tim
@Tim, your anointing means more to me than the $21,000 dollars. But to be on the safe side, I’ll let you buy the coffee next time we have breakfast together:)
Matt,
Couldn’t agree more with you. One scary thought – relevance in terms of social attention does not necessarily equate to expertise. There are lots of people taking advantage of the virtually no-cost ability to communicate with the masses through the web to sell themselves as experts. I believe that lack of real world experience and credentials will hurt them in the long run, but will also hurt society in terms of lost productivity. I guess you could argue this process has always taken place whenever there was a major communication/business/social paradigm shift.
John
@John, Wow, you really made me think about something I had not considered before: perhaps one can be considered a social expert if one can teach others how to attract social attention. Maybe social attention will be a market niche not requiring market implementation proof? I don’t know, but I know relevancy is such a subjective term. Loved your comment-John.
@John As an aside, I sure did my fair share of fly fishing on the Battenkill River when I lived in Boston for a few years. Vermont is a beautiful state.
Well Matthew, I’m having trouble putting into words my thoughts based on the fact that jaw is on the floor thinking about Randy ever declining a $21,000 gig!! HA
You raise some good points but let’s look at the definition of “EXPERT”: A person with a high degree of skill in or knowledge of a certain subject.
If I went to speak as a “Social Media Expert Who Can Guarantee You Business Results” then I would go as a fraud b/c like you said, I can do that. It’s all still so new and it’s hard to wrap your arms around the ROI. BUT when you go and speak to groups who don’t even know what Twitter or podcasting or Email Marketing are much less how to use them in their business, then I go as an EXPERT – not just because THEY see me that way (and most of the time I feel my best after one of these meetings b/c I know more than EVERYONE in that room and my head swells at the thought!!!) but more because I do have a high degree of knowledge on this subject. I don’t know everything but we need people like you, me and that other Marketing Twin to speak to groups to educate them. So that’s why we have “experts”.
Hope my thought makes sense. I’ve got to run now b/c I need to go find one of the scams to get me 10,000 more followers to beef up my Twitter account so you’ll think more highly of me!!
(just kidding of course)
Love the thoughts – keep ‘em coming!!
@Marketingtwins this series of three meetings I turned down was speaking to digital marketers and internet marketing professionals. However, it goes back to that which I was being asked to speak about. I like so many others, have some creative ideas on using Twitter & Facebook as a tool of marketing strategy, but the truth is I don’t have any ROI proof for our business that Twitter or Facebook is getting us closer to having a new client. It may assist us in branding, and even getting considered for speaking engagements, but our heart and passion is working with small business owners to implement revenue producing strategy. I have no head-trash about getting paid to say, “here is how I use Twitter and how I’m learning to develop relevant tweets for my followers, but I got nothing after that…”