Chapter 14: Everyone Should Hire “Social Media Experts”
Editor's Note: Some marketing professionals are still hesitant to trust anyone who calls themselves a “social media expert” these days, believing that the rules of the game—and its players—change too quickly for anyone to master the field. This contrasts sharply with the nature of the complaint about the social media expert that Rand disputes in this post (originally published on The Moz Blog in 2011), as it is based on the premise that social media skills are merely common sense.
I caught a post from Peter Shankman entitled “I Will Never Hire a Social Media Expert and Neither Should You.” It's not the first of its kind, nor was it the best argued, but it struck a nerve and has made a number of waves around the web. Needless to say, as someone who employs multiple team members with a great deal of social media expertise, I strongly disagree with the substance and sentiment of the piece.
Here's Mr. Shankman's argument in his own words:
No business in the world should want a “Social Media Expert” on their team. They shouldn't want a guru, rock-star, or savant, either. If you have a “Social Media Expert” on your payroll, you're wasting your money.
Being an expert in Social Media is like being an expert at taking the bread out of the refrigerator. You might be the best bread-taker-outer in the world, but you know what? The goal is to make an amazing sandwich, and you can't do that if all you've done in your life is taken the bread out of the fridge.
The full piece (see http://shankman.com/i-will-never-hire-a-social-media-expert-and-neither-should-you) makes a passionate case, but an entirely false one. There's no evidence, only opinion; no examples, just speculation; no data, but loads of stereotyping. Peter founded and sold HARO, the social media service that connects journalists to subject-matter experts. He is certainly one of the premier benefactors of social traffic and of a new, more socially connected web, yet Mr. Shankman somehow manages to ignore the benefits social media has brought him (and his company and its clients) to write a scathing post that dresses down anyone who dares claim expertise in this marketing discipline.
As with my arguments against Mr. Roadruck's sensationalist post “White Hat SEO is a Joke” (see Chapter 1), I'm worried that I'm falling for troll bait. Regardless, the people who do great social media marketing deserve a strong defense, and I believe the evidence is almost entirely in their favor. Besides that, as an SEO, I've long felt the brunt of baseless attacks by ignorant skeptics. I feel a kinship with those who've had their profession ridiculed, and have a duty to stand up for them.
Let's start by exploring the popularity of the social media expert in comparison to a more traditional marketing job role Mr. Shankman points out, media traffic planner:
Marketing involves knowing your audience, and tailoring your promotions in specific bursts to the correct segments. “Social media experts” don't know this. They'll build you a fan page, and when all that work doesn't convert into new sales, they'll simply say, “Well, we'll just post more.” Don't be that guy. Real marketers know when to market using traditional methods, social media, or even word of mouth. Go ahead. Ask a “social media expert” what a traffic planner does at an agency, then laugh as they quickly ask Google for help finding the answer.
As you can see from the figure, there's a dramatic rise in interest and demand for social media folks over the last couple of years. I don't think this is because companies are “wasting their money.” In the current economic climate, companies are watching the bottom line more closely than they have in the past 20 years when hiring. These businesses are investing in high ROI projects and people, and social media is part of that.
The primary point Mr. Shankman appears to make is that social media skills are merely “commonsense” abilities that every marketing professional has. Thus, there's no need for specialists or experts to assist marketing departments with understanding the nuances of the field.
I beg to differ.
Product, marketing, engineering, and customer service departments can all benefit from gaining more knowledge of how social media works, and very little of it is merely common sense. From knowing the difference between an original tweet and a retweet (on the basic end of the spectrum) to crafting lifecycle attribution by melding tools like bitly and Facebook Insights with Google Analytics (on the advanced end), leveraging social media expertise is often critical to improving overall performance.
Facebook has 600 million users; Twitter's at nearly 200 million; LinkedIn is over 100 million. Blogs have hundreds of millions of readers and tens of millions of publishers. The microblogging platform and social media network Tumblr alone has 250 million pageviews in a day. Disqus reaches 500 million visitors each month, and has become the community/commenting system of choice for webmasters and bloggers. Social's driving an increasing proportion of the web's traffic, conversions, and value. How can anyone logically proclaim that experts are worthless?
Editor's Note: In October 2012, Facebook hit 1 billion monthly users. The following month, LinkedIn reported reaching the 200,000,000 member mark. Headed into 2013, Tumblr now has 91.1 million blogs, Twitter has 200,000,000 monthly users and Google+, which many predicted would fail as quickly as Google Wave did, has more than 500 million members with public profiles.
Business meetings are held in Google Hangouts. 72 hours of video are uploaded every minute to YouTube. 72 hours, every minute! With music services like Spotify, music “collections” are becoming a relic of the past for many. An undocumented number of weddings (both real and imagined) are currently being planned on Pinterest, which is now 10.4 million members strong. And 18,712 tweets per minute were sent as Barack Obama was sworn in for a second term as President of the United States of America.
As a thought exercise, I created the following chart that highlights some of the critical knowledge areas in social media.
(Note: As I am not a social media expert, this chart is likely to be more illustrative than accurate.)
Editor's Note: In 2013, you don't even need a “computer” to participate in social media networking. There are apps for that. Some social networks, such as Instagram, are only accessible with a mobile app. Despite last's year's privacy gaffe, the mobile app based, photo sharing community remains immensely popular. While it recently launched an online presence with limited features, users still upload all of their photos to the network through the Instagram app.
As social media networks and the services they offer become integrated into more aspects of users' personal and professional lives (often blending the two), many marketers are now faced with the enviable problem of having more data than they know what to do with. Marketers with social media expertise are in high demand.
I don't see how Mr. Shankman can believe A) that these pieces of knowledge won't help organizations improve, and B) that such knowledge is innate, requiring no specialization, research, or study.
As further evidence, I'll call to the witness stand some exemplary individuals and companies that I've seen have a massive impact on improving KPIs, processes, and internal use of social media. While I'm a passionate supporter of social media marketing, these are the true experts:
• Marty Weintraub of AimClear is one of the industry's brightest stars. His work, research, and client list speak for themselves. Everyone who sees Marty speak about social media is in awe of the passion, dedication, and level of expertise he brings to the field (and stage). (www.aimclearblog.com/author/aimclear)
• Dan Zarrella of HubSpot has put together some of the most respectable and useful research in the field of social media, and helped to turn HubSpot into a shining beacon of knowledge dissemination across the web. His presentations, webinars, and research have made him the web's pre-eminent social media scientist, and his expertise is backed by more data than nearly anyone else in the marketing field. (http://danzarrella.com)
• Ciarán Norris of Mindshare Digital, whom I've known for years, has grown from being a talented search marketer into being an even more talented social and brand marketer. He now runs digital media marketing for Mindshare in Ireland, and has helped dozens of big brands build remarkable, revenue-generating social strategies. (ie.linkedin.com/in/ciaranj)
• Jen Lopez runs community management here at Moz. She has helped us scale our social presence and increase user engagement across multiple networks. Jen is directly responsible for a substantial portion of our efforts to increase traffic, conversions, retention, and brand value. Her knowledge of social media tools, management platforms, branding concepts, and program design is vast. Jen also has a creative, innovative mind, and she knows how to inspire people to do great things. For example, she recently turned the Mozcation program into an amazing outpouring of community effort and attention. (www.moz.com/team/jen)
• Kristy Bolsinger of Ant's Eye View has helped dozens of local and national firms create successful social media and web marketing programs. I've personally heard great feedback from folks who've worked with her, which is why I continue to refer those seeking a consultant her way. (www.linkedin.com/in/kristybolsinger)
There are remarkable people with social media expertise. Some of them even use the highly appropriate title “social media expert” or “social media specialist.” They provide a ton of value to the organizations they work with. Neither Mr. Shankman, nor anyone else, should belittle their profession.
In fact, I recommend the opposite. Do as we've done, and hire folks with social media knowledge and expertise. You will be given opportunities that wouldn't be available to you otherwise. And if other processes around monetization and customer acquisition scale, social is a phenomenal complement to whatever channels you are currently pursuing.