Why Being A Social Media Expert Is A Bad Thing

Whenever I hear the phrase “social media expert” I cringe just a little bit.  Well, actually a lot.  To see people like @iJustine and @Pistachio be considered experts blows my mind.  It genuinely shows that right now companies are looking for anyone to tell them, “it’s ok, I’ve got this covered for you.”  That’s just not a recipe for success.  I’ll save the eventual rant on “expert” for a later post.  What I wanted to concentrate on today is the concept of being a viewed as or selling yourself as a Social Media Expert.

Before, we hop into that, I just want to say upfront that this is not about jealousy or my inability to get social media.  My book of accomplishments speaks for itself.

With that out of the way, here we go.  By definition, the term social media expert indicates someone can be considered an authority in a specialized skill-set.  Seriously, that’s what the dictionary says.

a person who has special skill or knowledge in some particular field; specialist; authority: a language expert.

The word though that jumps out at me is SPECIALIST.  You know what a specialist is?  The kicker of a football team.  Better yet, the long snapper.  Sure, they’re important positions, but the people holding those positions are often considered easily replaceable and not “real” football players.  Ouch.  I know, but it’s true.

If you’re considered a social media expert, by default you’ve been pigeon holed into a very niche marketing segment.  If you pitch yourself as a social media expert, you are effectively raising your hand and saying, “I can do only one thing…and that one thing is really niche.”  Would you ever position yourself that way during a job interview?  Think about it.

Imagine a scenario where a designer interview for a position, but indicates the only thing he knows how to design are postcards.  But, he’s an expert at designing postcards.  His competition though is a woman that’s a pure designer with experience in print, direct, interactive, etc.  Long-story-short she has experience in a variety of design mediums.  I’ll bet dollars to donuts, 99% of the time the person with just the postcard experience does NOT get hired.  The 1% of course is for the companies that do nothing but specialize in postcards   Therefore hiring a postcard design expert makes total sense.

Look, in the simplest terms, the most convenient definitions – branding yourself a social media expert conveys you have a a limited set of skills that are specific to a very niche segment of a marketing function.  That doesn’t sound very appealing does it?  For all of you that think being a social media expert is a good thing, let’s catch up in 5 years after the industry has evolved.  I’m pretty sure I’ll have a job as a broad marketer with a focus in interactive (which happens to cover “social”) – will you?