There’s a huge influx of social media “experts” on Twitter, many are recognized as experts for exemplary efforts in evangelizing social media or for producing amazing results for themselves and/or their clients.
Then there’s the self-proclaimed experts… abundant in numbers and eager to remind the masses that they are experts and obviously have to be, after all, they have a large number of followers… the numbers can’t lie… or can they?
Disclaimer – I do embrace social media and I do share and perhaps describe myself as somewhat of an evangelist, however, I don’t consider myself an expert… I’ll leave that to you but I will also say that I have much to learn and am eager to do so.
And so, after listening and observing for a couple of years now, the following a 5 things that I’ve observed social media “experts” frequently do but likely shouldn’t:
1. Not responding to @mentions or request/questions sent directly to them. This is particularly frustrating when experts ask for an opinion, feedback or information from their followers. You take the time to reply and help them out only to never hear back from them. I’m sorry but if Guy Kawasaki can effectively reply to almost everyone that reaches out to him then so can you!
2. Boasting about the number of followers they have. Its cool to have large numbers, however, given that there’s many ways to attract auto-followers, on Twitter quantity isn’t everything and a true expert is all about sharing and caring, not all about them!
3. Re-Tweeting the same people all the time and constantly Re-Tweeting only those who have huge followings. This is somewhat honorable, however, if all you do is re-tweet Gary V, Mashable, Guy Kawasaki, or other “celebrity” Twitters come on, you’re likely just kissing ass… try coming up with your own words of wisdom and own advice.
4. Auto-follow everyone that follows you and automatically send your followers a message that reminds them how great you are. Unless you happen to be a robot, what value is there in automatically following anyone that follows you? As more and more automated and robotic functionality gets incorporated into Twitter this is going to become hugely problematic in the future.
5. Tweeting only about “buzzword” topics. Sure, Twitter, facebook, the iPhone, Google, and Ashton Kutcher are all popular, trending topics, however, if these and other trending topics of the day are the only thing you tweet about then you are clearing trolling and begging for followers and re-tweets. If you are truly knowledgeable about the trending topic then prove it!
You may have no desire to become an "expert", however, to increase your chances and to become a little more productive with your social media efforts watch some experts or social "die hards" and observe what they do, how they do it, and most important, check out the tools that they use. If Mashable uses the Disqus comment system on their site then I’d say it’s likely good enough for your blog too! If your favorite news outlet tweets using Hootsuite then chances are good that its a decent tool. If you notice many mobile Tweets coming from Echofon or Tweetie then they are good tools to investigate.
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