Another 9 month “Social Media Guru”

UPDATE 3/20/10: This post “struck a cord”, and not a good one, with some folks.  I stumbled across a post on Michael Brito’s Facebook wall that spoke to the exact sentiment I had in my post.  Ok, albeit it was more diplomatic – See Aaron Lewis’ blog link (and go check out his blog click here) and video at the bottom of this post to get the skinny…..

I attended Alex Mandossian’s reunion this past weekend at the Marriott in Millbrae.

A great event and Alex is a fantastic speaker.  There were numerous take-aways such as productivity, mental strengthening and much more.  The disappointment I experienced was from a standpoint of expectation.  I thought there would be much more about the “nuts and bolts” and how to get various aspects of systems in place to get traction in your business and on the internet.

I do agree though, you need the mental piece because without it, the “how-to’s” don’t matter.

The experiential nature of the event was good, however, it was very much geared to gratuitous networking and self-promotion.  Not that I’m opposed to it, but being a first timer I was a little taken aback and definitely not prepared to have 150 business cards to hand out and have my “pitch” honed to attract buyers (previous attendees were well prepared with special cards designed for the event).

The most interesting thing I am finding at events, like Alex’s, today are the number of “social media experts”.  I’m tired of hearing of another social media guru.  Anyone who has been on Facebook for the past 9 months is now a social media expert,  anyone who has been able to build their way to a 10,000 or greater following on twitter (which can be gamed extensively) is now a social media guru, anyone who lost their job in the past year is now a social media expert/guru.

I’m excited about the future of where we are going but social media experts should understand that social media is more than just Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and various other places online to attack users with bad marketing messages.  I recently met a 9 month social media guru who was giving talks, booking speaking engagements and teaching groups how to “find their voice” online and in social media circles without having any idea of how to actually engage their audience to get traction and achieve results.

Social media is going to need some major overhauls to clear out the experts, gurus and riff-raff that might know something about social media but have no idea how to develop an overall online strategy to use all aspects of marketing, message development, traffic development, on-page/off-page SEO, website development and a comprehensive plan to fully engage their audience beyond just social media.  Social media is a place for transparent, interactive and engaging relationships and conversations but it should not be treated as the final frontier for monetization.

I look forward to the day I can go to a seminar and the social media guru’s I meet are really social media guru’s.

Here is a link to Aaron’s blog/video post – http://www.theaaronist.com/regarding-social-media-experts/

And here is the video – good stuff!!

Regarding “Social Media Experts” from Aaron Lewis on Vimeo.