All Things Cahill

A Great Big Social Media Bubble

Over the past couple weeks we’re seeing a lot of folks coming around to the view I express last year: 

The thing that calls it all into question for me is the number of people who are generally ex-online marketing folks now using strange titles like “Social Media User Guru” or something equally ludicrous. It reminds me of a networking group I once attended that turned out to be a room full of sales people, each hoping to sell something, and none realizing there weren’t any real customers there.

As the astute Esteban Glas points out here, both Robert  Scoble and  Joel Mark Whitt decry that which Witt calls “Social Media Incest”.   As I have said many times before: when the when the communication in the medium is mostly about the medium, the medium has failed.

The thing that truly amazes me how the new blogs about blogging keep popping up.  Most of them run by people new to blogging, writing and web design/development itself.  I ask you: what could you possibly have to add to the discussion if you don’t have any experience? Are you really expanding the body of knowledge, or merely parroting the Internet A-listers who catch your fancy?

Similarly, I see Social Media experts who are continually spouting the mantras of the lexicon, yet when you look at their “about me” pages (if they even have their own sites) you find they’ve never built anything.  Hint: I don’t consider an architect for a building job if his big claim to fame is that he’s walked around a few of them in his day.  You cannot be an expert unless you’ve actually built something, people.  Better yet, make that built several successful sites.

You see, by simply aping the A-listers, you are muddying the water.  You’re putting what credibilty you may have behind something you’ve never seen in practice, something that very well could be outright wrong.  

In a post on July 19, 2007 (Ask Not For Whom The Blog Is Updated…), I questioned the real audience of the blog (then I was writing at Vario Creative) and I honestly didn’t like what I found.  I’d started the blog to help us get more business, but in the end, I realized that I was merely talking to my potential competitors.  I think many of us are making the same mistake.  We’re not talking to our customers, we’re talking to our competitors.  

Can you break that mold, definitely.  I like the way Kim Woodbridge mixes up the tech side of blogging which keeps me interested with the more regular tips for average users.  To cap it off, she managed to underscore her excellent pricing and service for Wordpress upgrade work by raffling off a free Wordpress upgrade.  She cleverly gets the price for her service right in front of everyone…

We can be better than this folks!  Let’s start building rather than staring at white screens feeling pressured to write.

Tags: social media