Social Media is the new Wild West

I see more and more people with the tag "Social Media Expert" or "Social Media Strategist", and I often wonder what their interpretation of the title means. The modern social media movement only goes back to MySpace- early 2003, and followed closely by Facebook in 2004. We have less than a decade and really only about five years of mainstream "social media" under our belt, and even the big boys are still trying to figure out what it really is.

The rules and standards are starting to solidify now, but there is still a wild wild west element to the whole medium, and no one REALLY knows for sure who will be king. We still see companies that were titans in the web/media industry fall, and though Facebook is on top today, there was a time when MySpace was thought to be the king.

So are there "experts" in social media? There may be a few, but only a few. People like Seth Godin, Dan Zarrella & Lisa Strauss I would consider experts, but your friend's neighbors son, probably not. He may like social media, he may use social media and even have a blog, but that doesn't really make him an expert. Being an end user of a product and a designer of a product are two different things, and being familiar with social media doesn't equal social media expert.

I know, your going . . . Kevin, you're depressing us! Is anybody worthy of the title expert? The answer is . . . maybe. How'd you like that for an answer! Ok, so the good news is I don't think you have to be an expert to take advantage of social media and social marketing. The heart of social media is one person talking to another and sharing information, which is what marketing is all about. Firms spend MILLIONS trying to get information to their target audience and convince them to buy their product.

If you have a product, idea or a service then you must (not should or maybe) be using social media to get your message out. There is so much noise in media today, that you have to use every option available to help your cause. Even with social media you are not guaranteed to succeed, but without it - your likelihood of failure is that much better.

We will start to see more true experts emerge as social media creates a whole new category of marketing, but that also means that more people will be grasping for that title. We need more time under our belt before we are all "experts", but with every tweet and wall post we take one step closer.