Dear Social Media Gurus, Ninjas and Dragon-Slayers: Please Go Away
I'm not the first to complain about the plethora of "social media gurus" on the Web, and I will certainly not be the last. But after seeing this list of stupid social media titles, I felt the need to point out a few reasons all the "gurus" and "ninjas" are totally worthless, and why it'd be nice if they'd just go away and spare us all the trouble of ignoring their spammy follow on Twitter.
They don't have the right personality. These aren't people who fit with social media, much less get it. They don't have the social personality it takes to get the job done, and they don't have the patience or the strategic awareness to achieve real results. But how do they get so many followers? you might ask. Because they spam follow and unfollow, and use auto-follow tools to boost their numbers. It's nonsense.
They don't provide value. The vast majority of these "gurus" and "ninjas" will do everything they can to be the first to retweet Mashable and TechCrunch, and certainly read all the big social media blogs, but they provide little to no value themselves. They don't write things of value, tweet original content of value, or offer up any engagement. Everything they tweet, you'll probably hear from someone else who actually does offer value on their own.
They don't engage. Rarely do these people actually use Twitter for what it was designed--engagement! A large percentage of everyone's tweets should be @ replies and direct messages if they want to truly realize the value of the social network, and these "gurus" who don't bother to engage are missing out on the fundamental rule of social media marketing and consulting.
They're arrogant. The number of Twitter followers someone has is not an accurate indicator of their influence, expertise, importance, or anything else. These "gurus" seem to think otherwise, and are almost singularly focused on increasing follower counts. Anyone worth half a penny in social media consulting knows this should never be your goal, because the number of followers simply does not equate to a real return on investment.
They don't use the right tools. Far too often I've run across social media "gurus" who don't use the best clients, who don't take advantage of advanced client features, who feed in RSS feeds to their Twitter account, who sync their Twitter feed with their LinkedIn or Facebook feeds... or any number of other massive social media taboos. Nothing screams "YOU DON'T GET IT" more than these basic mistakes.
Are you listening, "gurus" and "ninjas" of the world? Are you paying attention? Then stop it. Either fix yourself or
just go away.
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