So I have been trolling around the web lately, and I keep seeing the term ’social media expert’ popping up everywhere. Potential employers asking for these so-called ‘experts’, so they must actually exist, right? But the term itself confuses me. How can someone be an expert in something that is still trying to figure itself out? I don’t think we have even begun to tap the potential of social media, so to claim yourself an expert in it seems ridiculous. According to Malcolm Gladwell from his book Outliers, you have to have around 10,000 hours of practice stowed away in something to call yourself an expert. I know I haven’t spent that long using Twitter, have you?

Now, I probably do actually spend more time than I should at various popular online social spots. However, if I was spending that much time seeing what others were doing, I don’t think I would have much of a life beyond the computer screen. I assume most people use them like I do: A drop-in drop-out scenario. I’ll just log into twitter, read a few tweets, then log off. Same with Facebook; I get on there, read my feeed updates, then get out.

So, if you were an expert at this sort of thing, I would assume that you would be commissioned to leverage social traffic towards some sort of marketing goal, whether it was to sell a product or service for a company. But here is the thing – most of the members who participate on these sites are just using it to socialize, not actively looking to purchase that new widget. Facebook has an ad serving platform that is not really intrusive and that can sell to targeted demographics, but in my opinion running a Facebook ad campaign wouldn’t fall under the responsibility of a Social Media expert.

I get the marketing side of it. The marketers job is to get there products or services in front of the right eyeballs. That’s fine, but that is any good marketer’s job. Where does the social marketing expertise play a role in this?

As far as I can tell, their main role would be to merge the social experience with the marketing experience. This could be done a few ways – blogging, twitter following, creating YouTube videos, etc. But where is the expertise required for that? Creating a YouTube channel isn’t difficult. Clicking follow to a bunch of anonymous prospects seems straight forward enough…

I think I’ll end this by saying that social media is an important part of a marketing strategy, I think it is premature to designate oneself as an expert. After all, if you asked me if I was one, I could easily say yes because I felt that posting a YouTube video or following someone on Twitter gave me the confidence to do so.