Now days, when you throw a pebble into a crowd, you are likely to hit three social media experts at once. Obviously, one wonders, how does one become a social expert?
It’s
real easy. Start by saying, “I am a social marketing expert”. Say it again,
this time a bit differently "I am a social digital expert". There,
now you are a social / digital expert. It’s as simple as that.
Okay,
if you feel that is just too easy and it weighs heavy on your conscience, here
are three more things you can do.
Firstly,
set up a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Google + personal profile
for yourself. Do try and populate it with a little content, however nonsensical
or stolen the content may be.
Secondly,
take a fancy picture of yourself preferably in a loose hoodie with an angular
pose making a random rap gesture. I know, you may think it does not befit your
age to do this. Hold that instinct in abeyance while you update your profile
with this picture.
And,
as the last step, print some visiting cards with logos of the above-mentioned
social sites and network with less savvier clients for so-called digital
projects. In many ways, this is not too dissimilar from the days when anyone or
anything with .com after his or her name was a digital expert.
By
now, one may be sufficiently piqued to ask, what makes for a social and digital
expert? The starting hypothesis is that just being on social media does not
make one a social (digital) media expert.
A
simple definition of a social media expert is a person having the ability to
create digital programs that further the brand’s cause on social media
platforms. The author feels that this expertise lies at the confluence of three
specialties – brand strategy, creative ideation and technology platforms.
In
other words, it is really old wine in a shiny new (tech) bottle. It is really
about satisfying universal timeless consumer needs with your brands, now in a
new engaging interactive avatar.
What
we are looking for is a nearly impossible combination of left-brain strategy,
right-brain ideation and almost Boolean software coding. Any less than all
three, and you should be called a brand strategist, a creative ideator or a
social technologist; not a social digital expert.
Even
having all the three skills is not enough by itself. Over and above that, one
needs to have the entrepreneurial ability to spot a solution that uses the technology
platform in an unconventional way while also addressing the strategy in a
‘socially’ refreshing way.
Given
all the above requirements, to borrow liberally from that eminent rapper,
Eminem, how do we get the real social digital expert to please stand up?
If you
do not think that you were option D ‘All-of-the-above’, then your next best
option would be to collaborate with the right skills sets in a way where the
whole is larger than the sum of the parts.
In
the interim, while you are finding the right people to collaborate with, do try
and set up a Facebook Page for your business, use LinkedIn ads to recruit
somebody, and a Twitter handle to connect your brand with some current trending
topic. If not anything else, this exercise will enlighten you that just being
on social media does not make an expert.
One
other initiative that helped the author understand social media nuances was to
read about the successful and not-so-successful cases - Burberry, Old Spice,
Indian Railways, GAP, Unilever (Project Sunlight) ... the list goes on and on. These
cases help understand the human motivations behind social networking and how to
include your brand within these motivations in a meaningful way.
Lastly,
it pays to be in 'constant-beta' mode i.e. always learning, doing and iterating
between the two. This ability to unlearn what you already know (or think you
know) and to start learning from someone who may be two generations younger
than you is particularly tough, especially when one thinks they know the
formula for success.
There,
you have it. It is really a combination of collaborating, experimenting,
learning and humility that will take you on the path to becoming savvier at
social marketing. And no, you will never become an expert at it. Which is why,
the author believes anyone who calls himself an expert is obviously fake!
P.s.
In case you are interested to get some insider tips from the people who have
traveled this road before, click here: http://slidesha.re/1hvRrCt. Sadly, they refer
to these people as 'experts'.
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