There are a lot of people betting their careers on social media. They’re granting themselves fancy titles like social media expert, social marketing gurus, or social media optimizers. SMEs and SMOs. Here’s some stark advice to most of these so-called experts.

Give up while you can.

I’m not trying to be a jerk or to get rid of the competition. I’m pointing out a reality. The career choice of most social media experts is going to be short-lived. Why? because, there’s only so much they can contribute.

Let Me Explain

Anything that you can know well enough to be an expert at in 1,000 hours or less is simply not worth pursuing as a career. For those counting, that’s the equivalent of about one year of school. That’s not very deep. In fact, most of the intern level people I interview have at least 2,000 hours of MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn experience under their belt just from being in school and looking for a job. That makes most recent high school graduates bona fide social media experts (not like this guy).

Would you entrust your corporate social media campaign to an 18-year-old? Didn’t think so.

You Can’t Hire the Real Thought Leaders

For those looking at social media in a PR, marketing or brand monitoring role, here’s some advice: look for people who can get things done, and shy away from “thought leaders.” Why? Because the self-proclaimed social media experts are not the real thought leaders. The real thought leaders in social media have names like Mark Zuckerberg (creator of Facebook), Evan Williams (founder of Blogger and Twitter), and Reid Hoffman (of LinkedIn fame).

With all due respect to our local social media experts (including us), guys like Evan Williams clearly are not the ones that are showing up, hat in hand, to sell you that blogging boot camp or the “how to use” LinkedIn consulting. They’re a little busy changing the world at the moment. If a person calls themselves a thought leader, they either really are, or they have a lot of time on their hands to do lots of thinking and not a lot of working.

Here’s the second issue with most SMEs: They know enough to be able to help the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. They generally can help small business find local customers on Twitter and even set up effective profiles on Facebook or LinkedIn. But that’s about it.

But larger corporations need to move beyond the local push. They need to reach people in their industry or demographic profile. They need to be able to measure the ROI of their efforts. They need to know immediately when one tweak or tiny misstep could result in a half-point shift in their market share, because that could translate into millions of dollars.

Your run-of-the-mill SME doesn’t have the skills, tools, or wherewithal to handle that. PR professionals and marketing companies with a part-time social media intern aren’t going to be able to turn on a dime like that.

There’s a lot more to social media than setting up a couple of profiles, tossing up a blog, and twittering. You need to strategize, develop an entire campaign, and then be able to measure the results. (Hey, even TV advertising and PR can’t adequately measure their results.)

Work With a Team Instead of a Talking Head

If you should shy away from the SMEs, then who should you trust? Social media agencies. Why? Because most social media agencies have been busy working instead of talking. Nothing is new to them (blogs have been around since the 90s, MySpace started in 2000). They’re not distracted by the latest shiny object or hopping on the latest craze. And they’re able to pull from an entire staff of experts, not just whatever they read on Search Engine Watch last week.

Most of us agency types see social media for what it is: a lot of work, that, if done right, has a high return on investment. We see it as a component of a larger program, be it advertising, public relations, marketing, or even creating shifts in public opinion. And we’ve got years of experience in advertising, public relations, marketing, and creating shifts in public opinion.

The question corporations should be asking of your social media partner is simple: “Can you get us where we need to go?”

That means a lot more than, “Can you create a YouNoodle profile for my new startup?” (And if they say, “huh?”, you don’t want them anyway).

It means, “Have you ever run an online grass roots campaign before?”

It means, “Do you know how to build a reader base for my blog?”

It means, “Do you actually have a clue about marketing, sales and PR that extends beyond Twitter?”

It also means, “Do you have the right capabilities to help us get this done?” More often than not, that last question is the show stopper for SMEs. Social media is a lot of work and often is too much work for a do-it-yourself approach, especially if they have more than one client. Because this job is more than just “First, you need a Facebook page.” And if that’s all an SME is telling you, run away. Very fast.

In short, many social media initiatives fail because they’re a lot more work than anyone expected. Especially the expert.

So if you’re one of those newly-minted SMEs, ask yourself: do you have the knowledge, experience, and tools to create a professional campaign that meets your client’s expectations? Are you willing to put in the hours and hours beyond a Twitter profile? Or are you going to risk your client’s money and your professional reputation to find out the hard way that you can’t?

About the Author: Erik Deckers
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.

Tags: Social Media, Social Media Analytics, social media experts, social networks

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Opinion, ProBlogService, Social Media, Social Media Analytics, 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.