Go to search.twitter.com and run a search for phrases like “social media guru” or “social media expert.”

I expect the majority of tweets you find will be tongue-in-cheek mockeries of people that lay claim to these titles. It has become a cliche, a joke, a new stereotype. Why? Because the industry has been inundated with supposed gurus and experts with about as much expertise as my grandmother, and people are lashing back. They’re tired of being spammed with e-book advertisements or so-called experts who don’t know the difference between podcasts and peapods.

And what are most of these supposed experts and gurus telling you? That you have to connect with the “right” people or you’ll damage your social graph. This is either code for “I’m not following many people on Twitter, here’s a reason for that” or they really don’t realize that who’s following you has little impact on your supposed “cred.”

It’s Hard to Damage a Social Graph

Unless you’re trying to portray yourself as an elite A-Lister, following a large number of people is rarely a detriment. In fact, the people that have been most successful, like Guy Kawaski, have also been the most open to meeting and connecting with new people. The others, with tens of thousands of followers, and only a few dozen they follow? Some might call them elitist snobs who are more interested in growing fans than actually being a social media practitioner.

The other argument is that if you make an effort to connect with the right people, you’ll grow faster because you’ll be more trusted or have more “cred.” The question then becomes, well, who are the right people? Paying customers? Or other “social media gurus?” (And frankly, you can’t swing a dead cat on Twitter without hitting three social media experts.)

But, It Can Be Done

Connecting with people isn’t going to damage your social graph. To do that, you’ll need to spam, spout offensive remarks or, the ultimate death sentence, lose your sense of humor.

About the Author: Erik Deckers
Erik is the VP of Creative Services for Professional Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He is a newspaper humor columnist, appearing in 10 papers around Indiana. He has also written numerous business articles, radio theater plays, and stage plays. Erik helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is currently working on Branding Yourself: How to use social media to invent or reinvent yourself, which will be released in December 2010 by Que Publishing. He is writing a third book on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks about blogging and social media.

Tags: microblogging, Social Media, social networking, twitter

This entry was posted on Friday, March 20th, 2009 at 9:13 pm and is filed under Social Media, Social Networks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.