The final habit in The 7 Habits is “Sharpening the Saw.” This means that in life, once you have worked on the 6 other habits, you need to keep on working on them. You’re never done. To quote one of my favorite lines from Parenthood, “It never ends. It’s like your Aunt Helga’s butt…it’s twice as big and just as scary.”
In life, you can’t really be an expert at “living.” You can lead a good life. You can leave a good legacy for yourself. There are life coaches out there, but really they tend to focus on motivating you to life your life in better ways.
Well, I don’t think you can be an expert at Social Media either. There are a few reasons why I say that.
The technology is changing too much, too fast
Just like in life, things change in Social Media on nearly a daily basis. Heck, just Facebook alone changes hour by hour, right? If you say you are a Social Media expert, you need to be able to respond intelligently to any question that comes up about any of these changes. And by the way, Social Media experts (so-called) also need to keep their eye on things like SEO and search engine wars. You need to know everything about “new Twitter,” new Facebook groups, the new Google URL shortener, why people are mad at the bit.ly URL shortener, and more. There is not, I am fairly certain, a way to keep our arms around every single thing going on anymore. It’s like life. You grab what you can.
Social Media is about people
Can you be a people expert? That’s different from, say, a relationship expert. It’s different from what Dr. Phil does. What I mean is, can you always predict 100% what someone or groups of people will say or do at any given time? This is not a shortcoming on your part so far as I can tell. I’m definitely not a people expert. Well, Social Media is run by a people engine. It’s a people-technology hybrid. You can’t really know what people will say to a certain post or tweet. You can’t really know when the backlash against auto-direct messages will really come and knock you upside the head. A Social Media expert would have to be 100% right about how people work all the time. Now there are people who can read people pretty darned well – but would they want to take a quiz? I’d bet not.
The environment of Social Media changes
I’ve blogged about this before, and I’ll very likely blog about it again, but Social Media is an evolving creature by necessity. The Twitter that exists now is very different (so I hear) from the Twitter of 3 years ago. The people who are rising to the top of the pops now may not have done so a few years ago. The expertise that people gained five years ago may be mostly useless to them in many ways. In short, one must always analyze the environment anew. There are always new people joining. There are always people leaving for whatever reason. You can never perfect a flowing stream because the water keeps moving. So it is with Social Media. The stream, Twitter and otherwise, just keeps on going.
This is not to say that the people who are really really talented at using Social Media as a tool are fakes or anything like that. They are really really good at what they do. But one might note – they don’t refer to themselves as experts. They might, at most, say they have some expertise.
So what does this mean for us ordinary folk? It means that there is no reason to try for perfection. It can’t be done. You can’t keep on top of everything. You can’t be an early adopter of everything. You can’t know the ins and outs of everything. But what you can do is set goals based on the other habits and develop yourself how you see fit.
If experts don’t exist, what categorizations do I see in Social Media? Here are a few.
Community Builder
Educator
Business Person
Company Representative
Where do you want to grow in Social Media? What do you want your “sweet spot” to be? Work on that. Tend to it like you would tend a little garden. Maybe you could even become an expert at community building or an expert at teaching people how to use Twitter. Sharpen your saw.
And don’t worry about the folks who call themselves experts. The more I learn about Social Media, the more I realize that people who call themselves experts are actually pretty far behind the times.
What do you think?
Image by Päivi Rytivaara. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/paivimkr
Marjorie, your categories are spot on. And you’re right: change is the name of the game. As the philosopher Heraclitus said, “You can’t step into the same river twice.”
I for one am glad to hear you challenge the “expertise” or many self-proclaimed social media experts. More often than not, their paper-thin knowledge base disappoints me.
That’s not to say we wouldn’t benefit if suddenly more luminaries like Chris Brogan appeared. We surely would. But those kind of folks are scarce.
Most of the “experts” I encounter fall into either of two camps. One camp insists that social media is all about technology (media). The other insists that it’s all about networking (socializing). Of course, social media is about both those things, as you point out. (And let’s not forget content.)
Ironically, the media-focused experts all seem to have jumped onto whatever bandwagon last passed through town, while the socially-focused experts all seem to lack social graces.
Thanks, Bob. I agree, there is way too much segmentation. And there are way too many people who call themselves “guru” or “expert” and you find that they don’t really seem to have the basics of engagement down. It makes me right sad.
Thanks for following me over here 🙂
Hey Margie,
I, as you are, have been weary and leery of the new professional class of “Social Media Expert/Guru”.
From proclaimations of “More Followers” and “More Subscribers” and now “More Customers”, for most of these folks to self credential themselves with lame metrics (i.e. Twitter followers, facebook friends, viral video hits and so on…) May speak to a larger problem in our hyper connected society…which these guys are exploiting at the speed of hype.
The failure by individuals to develop relationships (something we all learned in kindergaten and playgrounds).
Imagine a professional hiring a SME to tell them how to talk to the public through social media networks and platforms to win business (there has to be an irony there noticeable to more than you, Stanford and the other great folks #tweetdiner)
But then again, as the saying goes, some can’t see the forest for the trees :-).
Great points, Michael.
Now what I really want to know is why I am just seeing this comment now. Sorry about that!
Yes, there are a lot of people who are getting really hung up in the metrics side, and it may be because that part of Social Media is less…fluffy. It’s solid. It’s nearly tangible. So it’s easier to become an expert in something like that. The other stuff, the human stuff, well, that just gets messy 🙂
Great piece Marjorie.
I was going to Tweet this out, but it doesn’t give me an option on your site to Tweet the piece. 🙁 The old site used to let me Tweet this out and provided its own short link for it.
Terrific-now I can share the piece on Twitter!
One of the key things that stuck out with your piece: it’s tough to be a social media ‘expert’ when things are consistently changing. Couldn’t agree more.
I would never call myself an ‘expert’ of anything. Knowledgeable, sure. Informed, sure. But an ‘expert’? I might as well be setting myself up for disaster.
yeah, calling oneself an expert is surely inviting massive change, right? 🙂 I wouldn’t invite that kind of trouble.
Part of the trouble with the idea of a Social Media Expert is that pace of change. It’s also a failing of qualifications. It’s not just the tools – how many of us have actually studied psychology, philosophy, statistics, parapsychology, anthropology, or any of the other social sciences (not to mention technical writing, lexicography, rhetoric and debate methods) in a formal enough way to know the causes behind the movements of the crowds?
It’s one thing to recognize the effect the technology has – it’s entirely another to recognize that the human history, and the human movements behind the rise of these tools is incredibly important.
We don’t need the web’s version of Bill Nye, teaching us why social media is neat – until we’ve had our Linnaeus to build a codex of workable information, a platform for expertise to be described by.
Respect the social sciences, yo. 🙂
You’ll hear no argument from me. Being in this world almost makes me want to go back to grad school and get a degree in sociology. Almost.
It would be easy enough to find a dissertation topic, that’s for sure!
Amber Naslund actually recently mentioned that anthropology is something she wants to dig into more. Sounds like you 2 are on the same page.
Spot on, as always, Margie. Like Ian, what strikes me most about Social Media is its almost organic nature, a following of its own principles that seem to owe more anthropology than organisational theory. Complicated of course by the added layer of technology and rapid evolution akin to the Industrial revolution but more powerful because of the speed – driven by the availability of information and willingness to share. How could anyone be an expert in such a nascent field?
In many years time there may be plenty actual ‘Experts’ in the meantime, there is this knowledge sharing – particularly where you are concerned, Margie, in the kingdom of the blind…. You are indeed ‘Mother Goose’ 🙂
haha, well, I wouldn’t say it’s a kingdom of the blind. We all have things we know, and the people I deal with, anyway, are just as good at sharing as I am 🙂
I like the word organic. A lot of people refer to the ecosystem, but we seldom take that one step further to realize that ecosystems consist of living organisms. In this case, it’s us! And what species is more crazy than the human one? I ask ya. You don’t see sloths using Facebook now do ya?