True Experts Aren’t Self-Proclaimed
We’ve talked a lot about Twitter and Social Media Marketing over the past year. To truly build an online brand, you need to become an expert.
Darren Rowse had an interesting tweet last Friday. It was something to the effect of, “I wonder how many people on Twitter have Social Media Expert in their profile?”
The answer is far too many.
People, in thinking that it will get them more leads or more money or more followers, will quickly add the word ‘expert’ to their online identities. They feel it makes them more valuable to the community and it reinforces their own self worth.
Expert status is something that’s earned though, not given. Self proclaimed experts are just that – self proclaimed.
Think about it. If I was to put a pool in my backyard and then tell all the neighbors I was an expert in pool installation, is it warranted? Have I tackled every problem that has come up regarding pools?
Hell no. I am simply someone that follows an instruction manual!
Establishing Expert Status
Two Christmas’es ago, I finally got an Xbox 360. Not that I have a tremendous amount of time to play, but when I get the chance I enjoy it immensely! Shortly after I unpacked the console, I took a trip to all the regular video game shops – Best Buy, Circuit City, Game Stop. It’s been a while since I played anything with a controller, so this was all new to me.
My first stop was Best Buy. The number of games sitting on the shelf was unbelievable. There were first person shooters, role playing games, action / fighting games and on and on. I stared at the rack for close to 10 minutes trying to choose something, but nothing jumped off the shelf into my hand.
Next stop, Circuit City. As soon as I walked over to the game section, a sales guy greeted me. Normally, I don’t like to be helped when I’m shopping, but this was a different story. I was hoping this guy had recommendations as to what the good games were.
He didn’t. It wasn’t that he was clueless, but he was a car stereo guy filling in for a buddies shift.
Strike Two.
Around the corner from Circuit City is Game Stop. Immediately after walking in, I noticed this slightly overweight, pierced, tatoo’ed god of a gamer. He was busy unpacking boxes, so I started looking through the shelves and checking out the backs of cases.
When he finally walked over he said, “Don’t buy that. It sucks. You’ll be back before the end of the day…”
“I gave him a quizzical look and thought, that’s not how it’s done! Your supposed to be selling me stuff!”
He went on to show me three great games, of which I bought all three. He also recommended a game that was coming out, so I put it on reserve.
After that simple exchange, I knew that I’d found my new favorite video game store. And it was all because of the clerk! He was a gaming expert and wasn’t afraid to stop you from buying something that sucked. For that, he’ll get my business for however long he’s in the store.
People’s Opinion Of You Matters
In social media, it doesn’t matter what you think of yourself. People can’t be fooled. You either are an expert or your not – there isn’t any in between. If you find that people are unfollowing you faster than you can send a retweet, something’s wrong.
If you are an expert though, that fact will shine through every time.
The trick is to be genuine. To feel truly connected to who is on the other side of the tweet. To respect them as people do in day to day conversations.
Social media isn’t a one way promotional engine that lacks credibility. It’s a conversation where expert status is given and taken away every day.
I say I'm a wordpress expert because that is what I consider myself to be. I also try to back my claims by providing help to those that ask. So far so good.
There are tons of expert calling themselves experts but not necessarily using the word expert.
Like for example
"We show you the best way to market your business, day after day." (From your about page
Calling yourself an expert is never a problem if you can back it up.
Can you? =)
As long as you back it up – that's fine. Other people perceive you to be an expert. I was mainly talking about those who have an introductory understanding of a topic and tell everyone they're experts. There are a lot of those people out there.
When I first started working for myself, I was hesitant at calling myself an expert. I was worried that if anyone ever asked me a question and I couldn't answer it, my reputation would be in jeopardy. Now, six years later, I can admittedly say I was stumped once. But I still don't know everything. No one does.
I guess what I was trying to say is expert status is something that people think of you, which leads to you thinking that about yourself… That's all..
Yeah I know what your point was. I was just messing with you.
There is indeed a lot of experts on Twitter and Twitter experts. People with less than 100 followers and that sell Become Twitter god ebooks.
From looking at the bots that follow me I would say there is almost a 1:1 ratio between those that call themselves social media experts and that use auto-follow software =).
I'm totally unknown but still consider myself an expert. Thats the problem with working in the shadows but I'm slowly emerging =).
LOL – Thanks for clearing that up Andreas :0) I agree with the auto follow software comment.
What is it you do? I visited your site – you program and do some marketing. Do you do theme design or are you into plugins? Or custom apps? I'm interested..
That site I would consider still in the making. Its a little wishy washy at the moment. Will pickup this week. A projects launch date was rescheduled to an earlier date and just rescheduled again to a later date. So I've been very busy.
When it comes to Wordpress I write plugins. I'll be releasing a Google Website optimizer plugin to some beta tester this week or rather a alpha version. Probably another Google related plugin after that one. I got a list with various plugin ideas/concepts.
Other than that I'm currently on working a Django project that will be in Swedish and for the Swedish market and another Django site that handles tracking of various stuff. The tracking site is just that I extract a current tracking system onto its own site. Currently focusing on the tracking site.
Can't spread yourself to thin.
That is awesome! What is Django exactly? I can code a lot of stuff, but haven't looked into Django much yet..
Please keep up the good work.