10 Questions to See If Your Social media “GURU” is Up to Speed
Ian Lurie, of ConversationMarketing.com is a hoot! I absolutely loved his post with a self-quiz about so called “social media” experts. So many folks are raising their hand in the “me too” attempt at earning some moolah. How does one really know the real deal from all the BS?
If anyone tells you they can GUARANTEE results – they are FULL OF IT! It’s nearly impossible to keep up – much less guarantee anything – with changing trends on the internet. Bah-ha! As Ian sez, kick’em in the groin! (just for being stupid)
Now, without further ado, here’s a excerpt from Ian’s post:
10 Questions to Evaluate a Social Media ‘Expert’
July 21, 2009 by ian
If you know more than 5 people, chances are you now know someone who declares themselves a social media expert. How can you tell if someone’s claim of expertise is legit? Here’s my quick quiz. Ask each question and take the appropriate action:
1: Do you have a blog?
If the expert answers ‘no’, that may be OK. Follow up with something like ‘Oh, you’re using Posterous instead?’. If they look at you blankly, end the meeting there. No sense wasting your time.
If the expert answers ‘yes’, get the address and go look. If they’ve been blogging for less than 2-3 years, and there’s no explanation like “I had to move my blog”, again, end the meeting.
Any social media expert has been somehow participating in the conversation for a long time.
2: When did you start in social media?
“6 months ago”. Yeah. OK. Bye.
“2 years ago”. Hey, not bad. Worth a chat.
“In 1992″. Er. Um. They’d better be referencing BBSes and Usenet.
3: What is social media?
“Blogging and Twitter and stuff”. Excuse yourself for a bathroom break and don’t come back.
“All of the conversations going on between people and people and businesses and such online”. Not bad.
“A trendy term to describe a new kind of mass media”. Totally acceptable.
4: What’s a social media campaign?
“Voting something to the front page of Digg using my proxy server and 35 computers”. Flee the scene, and get to a minimum safe distance as soon as possible. The Digg brigade may be on its way. Whatever you do, don’t hire them. While this is a valid tactic (I guess), it’s not a campaign. Nor does it generate long term results in most cases.
“Developing a great message and then reaching out to people, while giving them an incentive to ‘pass it on’”. Yeah, OK, keep ‘em around.
“I have this great software that will put a link to your site on 21,000 forums and 10,000 blogs…”. Push them down the garbage chute. Don’t be seen with them in public.
Why do you use other people’s original copywrighted content and basically re-hash it then twitter it as if it were your own? Dishonest. You should just link to the original article. You have added no value, you have simply scraped content.
I am not “re-hashing” Ian’s content. If anything I’m driving more readers to his blog, and adding VALUE to my own subscribers by exposing them to his brilliant writings in an excerpt.
In addition, this post was added to Friendfeed, Twitter and Facebook. People need to SHARE information – that’s what social media is! Sheesh! Get over yourself.
Also, if you Google “web coach tip” you’ll see that MY articles are posted in over 730k locations online. I’m hardly “scraping” anybody else’s content.
BTW, “sniffer”… funny how your domain is just a parked go daddy account with no real way of contacting you.
I’ll just assume you are an intern on a pointless crusade.
ps. You spelled copyrighted wrong. Duh!
You are a “parasitic aggregator” – take a listen to NPR’s On the Media interview this morning with 1st amendment lawyer David Marberger. That’s his name for people like you.
I predict he will succeed in his quest to get the copyright act changed and shut down parasites like you. You need to be stopped from benefiting from re-posting the content of real original content producers.
Admit it (if you can even be honest with yourself), you could just as easily post a simple link to his content, instead of copying and pasting it in whole onto your own site. You’ve set yourself up to compete with him for search engine rankings for his content. Not nice.
http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/07/24/05
Parasite? Search engine rankings? Benefiting from his post? Ha! LOL! Funny how the ignorant mind works.
Go clutter up someone else’s blog with your rhetoric – I don’t waste energy or time on anonymous “evangelists” like you.
I feel like I should weigh in here. I’m a particularly strong opponent of any form of scraping or plagiarism. I’ve spoken out, and called people out, in no uncertain terms for stealing my work. It pisses me off.
But what Donna’s done here is OK. Yes, she copied a fair amount of my article, but calls it out as such, and provides several ‘dofollowed’ links back to my blog.
The only thing I might do different: Instead of excerpting one big chunk, I’d excerpt several smaller ones with commentary in between. That would get you more search engine leverage as your content would have a better chance of being considered unique.
Welcome Ian, so glad to hear from you! I love your mind – truly a brilliant man.
Most of the time, 8 out of 10 I’d say, I usually include the first 5 or 6 sentences, or paragraph as a teaser.
Your post was different because I wanted my readers to really feel your humor up front and see what kinds of questions you’d ask.
As you know, many newbies don’t even know what to ask or look for, which is who most of my target market is.
Trust me when I tell you, I’m VERY particular about copy and originality. I once had a client who swiped word-for-word another’s web copy, only to call me at 11:30pm in a frenzied panic to take down her website because she had been busted by the original copy owner. Boy, talk about foolish!
Thanks for the tip on smaller bits w/commentary. You’ve inspired an article in the works.
Best to you, dp