A guru is someone that is regarded to be an expert in their field of knowledge. Wouldn’t it then make sense for us to label someone savvy in social media as a guru? That is where the common person would be wrong and here is why!
Social media is a confusing field and so the common person may want to label someone a guru just because they seem to have a wealth of knowledge about the subject. That isn’t the issue at hand though. The self labeling social media guru is who you need to stay away from! Someone who truly understands social media marketing can understand this. Plus most people who say they’re social media gurus are out there over charging people and/or not providing true social media information.
I’ve seen this first hand in countless webinars and seminars, to the point it has become a running joke between my peers. For example just last week I attended a social media marketing seminar, I repeat social media marketing. This would lead someone to believe that in the course of the 8 hour seminar all aspects of social media would be touched on (especially for the price of the seminar) as well as how to use social media to market your brand or company.
I’ll only touch on a few of the issues with this seminar are as there are too many to count and it should highlight my point. First off Facebook was discussed 90% of the time. Yes this is the one of the largest social media platforms but may not be the best or even used at all for certain industries. The person leading the seminar even went on to admit that he doesn’t use twitter because “I just don’t get it”-cue walking out of the seminar ASAP! Yet I stayed to continue to soak up valuable information *cough cough*. The other issue was that even though this was an intermediate course we focused on simple setting controls and basic tools. Lastly the marketing ideas discussed focused around an idea that he had for a funeral home Facebook promotion. It had many holes in the theory that I won’t get into.
I must follow up with that fact that this person was a self labeling social media guru. Please tell me how someone who barely knows Facebook and doesn’t “get” twitter can be a social media guru?! Perhaps he felt this way because he has conned so many other out of their money with this term.
My issue with this term stems from people like this but it also runs much deeper than that. Social media is a category to represent all of the different social media sites. The keyword here is different: Facebook is not Instagram, Twitter is not Pinterest, and YouTube is not Vine. Each of these has their own uses for different markets. On top of that certain platforms like Facebook use algorithm to decide what gets shown and what doesn’t and only those who work for Facebook would know this. Someone who discusses all social media should be at least fairly versed on at least the top 5 platforms. I think you might be starting to see why the all encompassing term of Social media guru is not even close to suitable.
Yes there are plenty of people out there who understand and grasp almost all social media platforms but they definitely don’t know everything. I myself have run a social media marketing company for many different small businesses from high end dress designers to high end fitness facilities to retail shops. This forces a social media manager to use many different platforms and in many different ways to cater to the client. I would never call myself a social media guru for being a successful social media manager.
Trust someone to give you social media marketing advice from someone who doesn’t label themselves as a guru and you’ll at least know they aren’t misleading you right off the bat. No one knows everything about social media marketing and don’t listen to someone who tells you they do.
