Why I Still Hate Social Media Gurus

The phrase, "Social Media Guru," has been floating around since I first signed up for Twitter in 2008 and it sickens me as much today as it did then!  Mostly because many of these self-appointed "Gurus" were your grocery bagger or barista months, if not weeks before they began their campaign of self-promotion.  Few, if any, of them had attended a college marketing class let alone worked in the field.

For those of us that had educations and had used them in the business world these snake oil salesman were the topic of many snarky Twitter conversations.  We all saw the potential of social media, we all understood its implications as a brand management and consumer engagement tool.  None of us however would dare to call ourselves "Gurus" in a medium that was very much still in its infancy two even three years ago.

As powerful as we all knew Twitter and Facebook were we were still trying to determine what the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) were.  How do we measure Return On Investment (ROI)?  Is it necessarily a monetary return, or is increased brand recognition and relevance enough?

These were the conversations we were having.  Social Media comes with its own set of very unique rules, and if you violate those rules the response is immediate.  Overt sales messaging is met with a zealous response of how dare you, followed by what I call the dog pile affect.  You remember playing dog pile as a kid?  One kid tackles another and yells dog pile, and instinctively we all jump on top of the poor soul. Well imagine that amplified by social media, except the poor soul on the bottom of the pile is your brand.

Did these "Social Media Gurus" understand these things?  Some had a high level understanding, but were easily thrown off by the hard questions.  Many just spouted catch phrases, and the flavor of the week tactics.  Don't get me wrong, there are legitimate leaders in the community.  Men like Chris Brogan, Olivier Blanchard, and women like Marsha Collier.  The thing is, these people were marketers before they were social media advocates.


Here are just a couple of giveaways that a prospective Social Media Consultant not only isn't a Guru, but they probably shouldn't be a consultant either.

1. Check out their stream on Twitter.  Below the content of every tweet is a time stamp with a via message indicating how the tweet was sent.  If you see to many instances of via web, this means they are posting directly from the Twitter.com site.  Any Social Media consultant worth their salt will be using one of the many dashboards available that allow them to generate analytics and other useful features.
2. Do they have a smart phone?  Seriously! We live in a mobile 24/7 world.  If your social media consultant is still sending their mobile updates via SMS there is a serious problem.  If you're using some of the automated features available out there then you're going to want to know when some interacts with that content.  The smart phone applications will notify you of a mention of, or message to your Twitter account.
3. Check their Klout score.  Klout.com has become the measurement tool of choice to gauge influence on Twitter and Facebook.  It's a zero to 100 scale, so the higher your score the more influence you have based on Klout's methodology.  I'm not aware of anyone that has a Klout score over 80, but rest assured if someone is in the 60s or 70s they're pretty legitimate.
4. What Lists are they on?  Twitter added the concept of lists to help users categorize their followers.  Much like a high follower count being meaningless if its all spam bots lists are equally worthless unless they are specific to a topic of interest.  Is your prospective consultant on lists indicative of their professional standing or are they on all the night life lists?

I hope you found this little rant helpful. Please leave a comment if you think I left something out, you agree with my point of view, or you think I've fallen off my rocker.