We wrote about the problem with people calling themselves social media experts a few months ago, saying there basically aren’t any. We figured this was just some little topic of discussion we had going on around town that would have died off pretty quickly, but it’s still going on, and there are a few more people talking about the same thing.

(We don’t think we started it though.)

Now, Doug Karr is putting a new spin on the “there are no social media experts” argument, saying there are a few, and he’s one of them. (We agree. He’s one of the few we gladly hang the “expert” moniker on.)

Doug says:

I call myself an expert for three reasons:

1. Businesses seek experts, not gurus and geeks.
2. Calling myself an expert holds me to a higher standard and expectation with a company that I must fulfill.
3. I fit the definition:

An expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by their peers or the public in a specific well distinguished domain. An expert, more generally, is a person with extensive knowledge or ability in a particular area of study.

Peter Shankman of Help A Reporter Out fame has come up with a rather extensive list of things to watch out for when hiring a social media expert:

3. They “discovered” social media in the last six to 16 months, and there’s nothing online from them in the social media space prior to that. (Remember – Google is your friend.)

4. All of a firm or agency’s “social media strategists” come from traditional PR or Marketing agencies.

5. Everything they learned about social media they learned by reading blog posts (i.e. no application). You can learn a ton about sex from reading Kinsey’s manuals, but I’d still rather be with someone who has some practical experience.

In short, it takes a big set of. . . experiences to call oneself an expert in an industry that’s not old enough to have any true experts. If we use the Malcolm Gladwell definition of 10,000+ hours, then most people will fail in this definition. The problem is we get people who have used the technology — usually Facebook and Twitter — for a few months, and think they know enough to be an expert.

The problem is, your average high school student has logged more hours on Facebook and the like, and thus “knows more” than the so-called experts.

However, I’ll accept people using the term “expert” in a few exceptions:

1. The person helped to actually create the tools like Twitter and Facebook (i.e. Biz Stone and Mark Zuckerberg).
2. The person is a developer or programmer for those tools, because in order to write for it, you have to have a deep understanding of how it works. Someone like Doug Karr, basically.
3. Someone who can show several measurable successes with the tools. Have they done campaigns before? How did they do? How did they do it? They should be able to show it, explain it, and replicate it.
4. Someone who knows more than most people. Now, this one violates the 10,000 Hour Rule, because it’s possible to know more than most, but only have a few thousand hours of experience. The term expert is relative, because there will be someone with more experience than you, but it’s a place to start.
5. They understand that social media is just another tool in the marketing toolbox. They should understand the psychology and marketing behind successful social media campaigns, not just which buttons to click. They should be able to integrate social media into an overall PR or marketing campaign, rather than declare that Twitter is the be all and end all of the campaign.

Graphic credit: Arbenting