I was reading an article last week that basically ranted against the proliferation of many social media “experts” who are basically jumping on the bandwagon to make some money, but don’t really know what social media is and are hurting their clients. I agree with the author’s concern. When I started offering my services as a social media consultant, back in January of 2008, there weren’t many people offering social media consulting or coaching. But as the months went past, more and more people suddenly became social media experts. I recall one meeting I went to where, I was discussing some of what I was doing as a social media consultant, and one of the members who usually billed herself as a web-designer abruptly became a social media coach (which is what I label myself) the next day.

Social media is a hot bandwagon to jump, especially in an economy that continues to be fairly poor. So suddenly we see lots of social media consultants. My question is: How many of them will still be social media consultants or utilizing social media as a career path when its no longer hot? Many probably will not stick with social media, once its no longer hot and can’t afford them a quick buck.

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As Twitter has exploded onto the online scene, its search capabilities and usability has generated a constant hum of buzz in the search world, as on lookers try to gauge its implications for Google.  

Albeit basic at its core thus far, searching keywords over the most recent user tweets, Twitter’s search has excited some as results are generated not from static sources but from fresh user generated content.  Now seemingly ready to become a staple inuser interaction (and possibly enter the wider search engine competition?), TwitterVP of Operations, Santosh Jayaram ...

Habitat is a trendy furniture store, set up by Terence Conran in the 1970s, for those who’ve never been to the UK its like a slightly more upmarket version of Ikea. @HabitatUK turned up on Twitter a couple of days ago, and decided to use trending topic #hashtags at the start of their tweets to get noticed. They used ones that had absolutely nothing to do with furniture, decorating, or shopping, but obviously the top hashtags for Thursday evening AEST such as #iPhone #mms #Apple and even Australia’s Masterchef contestant who got voted off #Poh. I found these on Twitter Search:

HabitatUK trending topic #hashtag spam

Just to really add insult to injury, HabitatUK even used an Iranian election hashtag, and threw one in for True Blood fans too, both trying to get people to signup to a database.

Hashtag abuse involving Iranian election

I’ve written about how easy it is to make a mess of hashtags on Twitter if you don’t know what you’re doing. Thanks to Twitter’s immediacy and public transparency, you can be quickly picked up on spammy behaviour - and the Twitter community made their disappointment clear to @HabitatUK.

Here are some of the more polite, yet dismayed responses:

I’ve frequently questioned the orthodoxy that it’s boom time for social media marketing, believing instead that an economic downturn makes marketers stick with what they know – which in more cases than not is traditional 20th century advertising.

One reason for this is the lack of understanding about the individual networks, with even many graduates having little 1st hand social media experience other than the standard Facebook profile and a bit of messing around watching videos on YouTube.

This is confirmed in research by the ad agency McCann Erickson, which did a study of UK marketing experts. 86% recognised that social media was more than just a fad...though does that mean one in seven think it is a fad?

However two-thirds (65.6%) said that they did not know actually know how to use it for marketing. And though 40% claimed to have Twitter accounts, of those 73% had either left their account dormant (30%), or only used it once a week or less (43%).

Social media like the stock market?

In a post, US Social media and PR commentator Shannon Paul picks up on the theme by comparing social media with...

Last week I briefly touched on a big issue that, on reflection, is the bane of communicators across various disciplines:

Communicators plan activities to reach our key audiences. However, we often don’t represent those audiences.

We may not be the same demographic as the target audience. We may not have the same interests, or hobbies, or lifestyles, or problems.

That problem is exacerbated when it comes to social media. As new research shows, social media practitioners have a different perception of social tools than do “average” users.

• They don’t build networks like ours
• They don’t consume information like us
• They aren’t influenced by online events like us
• They don’t care as much about corporate involvement in social media as we do

“We” are not “they.”

There’s no doubt that these tools are powerful. The Dominos Pizza uproar of the last few days is a prime example of the potential of social media to derail a company, while you only need to look at companies like Dell, Zappos and others for the postitive potential of these tools.

However, as I’ve evolved from purist to pragmatist, it’s become more and more clear that we are way further along the curve than they are.

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