Social Media Consultation: Because Even Tiger Woods Has a Swing Coach
Several years ago, my friend started a distance running program that required membership dues. Innocent enough, right? To the contrary, Columbus area running message boards were littered with scathing posts about how exercise should be free and that charging for advice on running was ridiculous. To hardcore distance runners, the notion of a pay-to-participate running program was insulting to the established running community. They simply turned up their noses, made fun of the new program and went on their merry way.
I get a sense of deja vu when I read articles like Why You Don’t Need Social Media Consultants whose premise is that social media is such common sense that no one should pay for consultation services. While there are a lot of silicon snake oil salesman out there, it’s naive (and dare I say professionally negligent) to unilaterally dismiss the idea of social media consultants. As Voltaire noted, “Common sense is not so common.”
Here are three reasons you should consider enlisting the help of experienced social media practitioners:
Save Time
Figuring out what tools to use can be a pain in the ass. You have more important things to do than learn about the latest, whiz-bang widget. There are an overwhelming number of options, but which make sense for you? After a conversation with a social media professional, you can quickly learn which tools are most practical for you to use to achieve your marketing objectives. Do you really want to research the difference between a Facebook Fan Page vs. Groups? It’s riveting stuff, but seriously? Or which video system is better to use, Vimeo or YouTube? Your social media “coach” offers hands-on expertise and shortcuts you to a best recommendation so you don’t waste time and energy.
Accountability
It’s human nature — when you have to report progress to another person, you’re more likely do the work. A coach (consultant) will motivate you to make progress on your social media program so it continually builds into something strong and valuable vs. atrophying and falling by the wayside. Think about the treadmill in your basement. Not pretty…
Keep Focus
It’s easy to get distracted and lose yourself in the minutia of social media tools. Are you generating the right content that your audience finds valuable? Are you paying enough attention to the right places at the right time? Building and reinforcing a brand demands consistency of voice and messaging. Your social media coach can help you keep your “eye on the ball” and stay on strategy.
I’m curious what you think? When I started in the web development business 13-years ago, I was sure EVERYONE would know HTML by year 2000. I was certain web developers (the social media consultants of the mid-90’s) would be out of business because “anyone can do this” — heck browsers have a ‘view source’ option to literally show how every page was built. But I was wrong (thank God). A portion of web development has gotten easy (WordPress, open source, etc.), but many aspects have gotten way more difficult (.Net is a real-life programming language — not mark-up code or scripts). Cascading style sheets are intimidating has hell to most people, but cake to tech-savvy designers. I think social media marketing will progess down the same line: easy for a small segment of people (like those making fun of my friend’s running program, which is now super-successful, btw) and increasingly more complicated for everyone else.
Finally, even the best golfer in the world – Tiger Woods – has a swing coach. No matter who you are and what you do, getting advice from an expert outsider is plain smart business.
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Comments
Spike: Firstly, thanks for your comment. Conversation is good, just trying to have some constructive dialog with other like-minded people in the biz. Secondly, I agree with you to a point — things are changing so fast that very few people have “expert” credentials. But like grad school, a portion of the students are ahead of the curve. You’d feel comfortable going to them for help after class as you know that some day (probably soon), they’ll graduates and will be considered “experts.” Those are the people I’m hoping are contacted for consultation; the snake oil salesman will eventually be exposed for what they are…hopefully. Thanks again, Gary
Great post Gary. We definitely still have a need for “advanced” consultants (I’ll avoid the term experts), whether it is in social media, HTML, or plumbing. There are too many moving parts on the ‘Net to keep up with everything.
Hey Gary, I agree completely with your Social Media Expert comments. I’m going to pass your thoughts along to Don Moxley at Lemonade — he’s got a tremendous interest in the same subject.
Spike Jones on November 13, 2009 @ 5:47 pm
Thanks for the link (I think), Gary. And nice points you make. But I have to say that I don’t believe there ARE any SM experts as you alluded to your last sentence. We’re all in SM grad school. We’re all figuring it out. We’re all exploring. And we all need different solutions for different situations. And the overwhelming majority of people who claim to be experts and are yelling the loudest have no case studies to show for it. Experts? Yeah, right.
Thanks for keeping the conversation going.