Social media ‘experts’
Yesterday I saw a few Tweets for a new book called Social Media is Bullshit (free chapter here).
And look what’s happening to Facebook’s share price.
If you want a consistent, well-written and perceptive analysis of why social media is a bit of a wet fart, just read Bob Hoffman’s Ad Contrarian blog.
But if I may, I’d just like to add the following observation:
I found a list of the top 20 social media experts in the UK.
Number one is a man called Chris Hambly. He has 6463 Twitter followers.
Number two on the list, Jamie Riddell, has 7100 followers.
Number three, Joanne Jacobs, has 4101 followers.
Ged Carroll, number 4, has 2385 followers.
Number five doesn’t seem to be on Twitter.
Number 6, Katy Howell, is ‘obsessive about social media and the challenges of making businesses more social and accountable’. She has 2648 followers. Her major clients are ‘Sony Europe, BT, Diageo, PSP, NSPCC etc.’
Number 7, Andrew Gerrard, has 2525 followers. He is ‘a social and digital media strategy consultant, helping organizations to understand and engage in the conversations that their users and customers are having’.
Number 8, Alan Steven, has 7740 followers.
Number 9 isn’t on Twitter.
Number 10, David Cushman, has 4334 followers. He is ‘regularly invited to speak around the world on the impact of social technologies’.
Now, I’m not saying that your number of twitter followers is or should be an absolute indication of your social media skillz, but… hang on… fuck it… I am. I am saying that if you are a social media expert you should have a lot of Twitter followers. How many? Well, more than some tit who tweets a few links, the odd joke and lots of opinions of John Terry that use the word ‘cunt’.
In short, me.
They should have more Twitter followers than me because I do it recreationally for my own amusement, am no kind of ‘expert’, certainly don’t sell my ‘knowledge’ to massive companies and don’t use Google Plus, Instagram, Linkedin, Pinterest or anything else to cross pollinate my number of followers (I do write a blog, but you already know that).
I have 2701 followers on Twitter. Not loads; not bad. But if you are a ‘social media expert’ and you have a smaller Twitter presence than me, you can’t be much of a social media expert.
And then there are people like Dave Trott and the aforementioned Bob Hoffman, who have 9670 and 7960 followers respectively, more than everyone on that list. I don’t think either of them would describe themselves as a social media expert (although, intentionally or otherwise, they both are), but they’ve done better than the people who do it for a living.
And if I wanted advice on how to build a brand online, I know who I’d ask first.
The strength in any garden is always down to pruning.
Obvious observation but I’ll say it anyway. Trott, Hoffman, yourself and many others have more people following them than social media experts because they are avid communicators – they know how to communicate, they can’t stop themselves and they’ll always find a way of communicating.
Social media experts are not necessarily communicators. In fact, chances are they know fuck all about powerful communication. Which is why they still haven’t figured out that social media is merely a medium, not the holy grail.
It’s also why they are on occasion blinkered wankers who accuse the rest of us of being luddites.
I think your argument is fundamentally flawed. What seems to be at the heart of it is the reasoning that one has little or no validity if one doesn’t have a sizeable following. I think it has been coined as the ‘my dick is bigger than your dick’ therefore I am better school of thought. Surely you don’t subscribe?
It’s just a channel, like any other media channel.
Patently, people don’t go on Twitter to read about social media. The majority uses it to follow news about their football team, their favourite comedian or to spank one off over Justin Bieber.
It’s cringeworthy how social media ‘experts’ state the fucking obvious. About ‘engaging’ with your audience, answering questions and having an ‘open’ conversation.
These are all basic social skills we should have mastered by the end of school.
You might have more interesting things to say than these people, or maybe you say things more interestingly. If all they talk about is social media and say ‘deliverable’ a lot, I’m not surprised they don’t have much of a following. Doesn’t follow that they’re not experts though. They may just be not interesting.
Took a quick peek at Mr Number One’s feed.
Dismal.
That he’s got even his mum following him would come as a surprise.
Oh. And he wants people to know that he has ‘lots of boats’.
Cock.
what if you only have 100 followers but they are all on the forbes rich list?
Top tip: If someone calls themselves an expert, there is a very, very strong chance that they aren’t.
Vinny Warren described social media as like editing a small local newspaper.
That summed it up perfectly for me.
It’s not complicated.
I agree and it is quite a strange list too. How did they miss @markshaw he has 15,860 – he’s an Author, Speaker, Twitter Consultant & CEO of EngagementIndex. Surely over 15,000 makes him king. Bloody ridiculous. He talks nonsense.
I think the twitter followers thing is a bit of a red herring.
The amount of twitter followers you have relates to how interesting the stuff you talk about is. So @benkaywriter is of interest to all of advertising, plus fans of your book, etc. Lots of people.
People actually interested in being a social media expert is smaller so less followers.
Doesn’t mean to say they’d not provide relevant advice as to how to get more people interested in you/your brand.
Alternatively you could just ask Ashton Kutcher and his millions of followers. I’m sure he knows best.
Depends.
If their (admittedly modest) number of twitter followers each include all 100 FTSE CEOs, than that’d be pretty impressive.
However, if it’s just 2000 odd webmongs like myself… not so much.
Points taken.
I still think that if you are a social media expert, moving in social media circles (whatever they are), meeting people and companies and making the most of your online presence because that is something you are really very good at, then you should have a lot of Twitter followers.
If you say that they have fewer followers because they don’t have anything interesting to say then that’s something of a social media failure.
People meet others online and follow each other for lots of reasons (politeness, obligation, genuine interest). Social Media Experts ought to know a lot of these people and increase their followers accordingly. How can you tell someone else how to have a great Twitter presence if you don’t know how to have one yourself? They have a massive vested interest/benefit to being bigger on Twitter (it makes them look like they know what the fuck they’re doing), so if they still can’t make it happen, even with that massive incentive, that reflects poorly on them, IMHO.
Or, as some of you have said, maybe it’s all meaningless. But you might like to check out some of the American social media experts I found. Some had 150,000 followers and I took that as immediate proof they knew what the fuck they were doing. Yes, some of those 150,000 might be spam, but that’s always going to be the case.
I love this post. I have now worked at 2 agencies/’communication companies’ that have absolutely hemorrhaged money seeking that ever-elusive slice of social media pie. Both ‘Social Media Creches’ (or some other bollocksy name) were headed up by chancers who started out above-the-line, but who had returned to the last chance saloon of SM, due to a rather fatal lack of actual talent.
But maybe, just maybe, it’s just the way you use ‘cunt’ so eloquently, Ben. Maybe that’s the secret of the Twitterati. Andrew Gerrard take note.
Hi.
Thanks for inviting me to this meeting.
I think we should do a Twitter feed.
I’ll happily bang on about social media and I’m not even on Twitter. Or Facebook. Or LinkedInn.
It’s just a matter of saying “deliverables” and “conversation” every other sentence.
All advertising and marketing experts are twats. And I include myself in that.
social media is about having lots of ideas all the time and being switched on all the time. tricky when your sole output is pure bullshit.
its all about the content, isnt it. and the presentation, of course. i havent looked at these peoples feeds, but i guess its self-conscious business style, i.e. sharing articles and links mixed with personal messages. i myself am bored watching people selling themselves.
also, i wouldnt actually say that the number of followers has much to do with expertise. especially when you can buy followers.
i do think, however, that one should at least have experimented with twitter to call yourself some sort of expert. i mean, thats fucking logic. maybe the people who are not on it are, but using pseudonyms. theres hope. im such an optimist.