If Alexander Graham Bell were alive today, do you suppose he’d call himself a Telephone Guru? Probably not. In fact, no one does. Except maybe this guy.

Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone certainly don’t call themselves Social Media Gurus (though, they probably could without much resistance).

How many years of analyzing different forms of media does it take to become a Media Expert? How long do you need to study people and social situations before you become a Social Expert? So why does it only take a Twitter account and a merging of those two words to earn people’s trust and the ability to steal their money?

I’ve never met a Social Media Expert, though I’ve met several people who claim to be. I’ve certainly met people who are knowledgeable about certain platforms. But only rarely someone who was so knowledgeable on a specific platform that they should be called “an expert”.

Having taught weekly classes on social media tools, I can safely say that I am not an expert, either. What I can say is this: beware the Guru. Challenge their credentials at every turn, because it takes some serious effort to learn enough to even *teach* these tools.

Clear results speak for themselves; truly talented social media practitioners rarely have to (their audience does it for them).

Person A is passionate about Widgets and spends a few years making contacts and friends in the Widget industry.

Person B joins Facebook in College and makes a ton of casual friends over a few years.

Both become Social Media Experts and start selling their services (and their friends’ attention) to the highest bidder. Person A does so with social bookmarking, promoting Widget- or Widget-service-businesses to their contacts/friends in their network. Person B promotes every client Facebook page to their Facebook friends (some who, out of some perverted sense of loyalty may become fans).

Who is the bigger douchebag? Are either really using social media as intended?

My answer: BOTH are equally douchebaggish and BOTH are abusing social media.

You can’t assume your friends (business or otherwise) have opted-in to your marketing jackassery. Do you really want your friendship to be self-selecting and end as easy as an unsubscribe? Is your friends’ attention to your client’s BS marketing techniques all that matters to you? Is that why you’re using social media?

Douchebag marketing tactics are ultimately self-defeating and short-lived.

I’ve been guilty of them, but I think there’s hope. You can recover. I’ve done it by separating out WTF!? Marketing’s client endeavors to WTF!? Marketing’s Facebook page (a work in progress). But you won’t see stuff about clients in my Facebook stream (an error so grievous it occurred only once).

Why would you trust a “social media expert” who is willing to sell out their friends to the highest bidder?

This person is considered a rock-star when it comes to Facebook. Her compatriots, experts in blogging, Twitter, and other forms of social media.

So, when I saw a squeeze page marketing their conference, I was pretty shocked. I had a lot of questions. Why were these experts using old-school (direct-response) marketing techniques to promote their skills in using these new marketing tools? From my perspective, this painted them in a very inauthentic light and I said as much.

I was bothered by my friend’s response – first, thinking I was attacking her personally (not my intention – I AM very direct, but I’m not intentionally mean) and second, that a long-form sales page was a legitimate technique to promote a social media event.

Many people my age agree with me that it’s an uncharacteristically poor marketing tactic for a group of social media experts to use; many people older than me do not… so in an attempt to explain this generational “schism”, here’s why I think social media squeeze pages are considered to be douchebaggery:

• Squeeze pages feel grody because they make us (your potential customers) feel stupid and unloved.
  • If someone really cared about getting my business, they wouldn’t waste my attention by pitching me in 5,000 different ways on a long-form sales page. They’d approach me (or a group of people like me) personally and directly. It shows they care. It shows they know me and respect me as a customer.
  • Wallpapering an ad across the web and then spamming me doesn’t show a lot of social media grace. If I were known for my Facebook prowess, you can bet I’d be almost exclusively marketing the event via Facebook or a blog.
• Long-form sales pages (or squeeze pages) aren’t built on the premise of creating a relationship with customers: an essential tenant of social media.
  • If I sense the end goal is getting my $ rather than providing me value (a common feeling from long-form sales pages) I know any services will be aimed at the same end.
  • Squeeze pages are meant to do two things: generate an opt-in response or generate a sale. When the thing you’re selling is social media expertise, this paints you as inauthentic.
  • Social media advertising works on Word of Mouth. Word of Mouth works best when customers/community members feel valued. I’m not going to disrespect my friends by wasting their time promoting an event by sending them to read 5,000 different pitches on a long-form sales page. I’m going to pitch them personally; if they bite, we both win. But if I feel disrespected because you didn’t care to pitch me (or a group of people like me) at least semi-personally, I’m not going to pitch you at all.
• The FTC recently cracked down on affiliate marketers’ claims (notoriously found: on squeeze pages) because they are often misleading.
  • Social media is all about reputation. Why would anyone even consider giving a hint of sleaze by using the same old-school tactics as affiliate marketers when social media is a perfect tool to cut through the sleaze and demonstrate authenticity?
• When you have to brow-beat your community to get them to sign-up, are you providing or inhibiting value?
  • For this specific conference, I was first sent an opt-in-based email message slamming social media snake oil salesmen, THEN directed to a long-form sales (squeeze) page, THEN asked to opt-in to yet another list or purchase…
  • Why should I get (potentially) spammed by you just because I wanted to attend ONE event? Yikes.

I might be a jerk, but I know an inauthentic tactic when I see one and squeeze pages are definitely sleaze-ridden.

I built the slides completely in Keynote – giving PowerPoint the snub.  I’ve been having a lot of issues with all Microsoft products and not being able to handle things that are copied and pasted – Keynote doesn’t seem to have that issue.  It seemed to work out a lot better, but there are some quirks that I don’t know how to remedy yet – like how to turn off bullet points.

The presentation itself was a lot of fun – a lot of great people there, willing to learn and ask lots of questions.  I’m hoping to teach the Twitter class again, but not sure when I’ll do repeat classes.  I was thinking the presentation itself would take up only about 15 minutes and the rest would be for discussion.  I was way wrong – the whole presentation took 45 minutes.  Had some great feedback, too:

“Nick has a unique gift for knowing WAY more than you do, yet teaching you generously without making you feel like a complete idiot. And you leave with some knowledge and some confidence in a very short time.”

“Valuable information for beginners and beyond, at a great price! I learned a lot and left feeling rather inspired, and confident enough to attack some issues I needed to conquer to make Twitter more useful. Thanks!”

I’ll definitely have some adjusting to do get ready for $1 101 on Facebook next week.

All in all, I would call it a victory.  Here’s the slides:

#FollowFive – thought of by genius @UnMarketing is going to replace #FollowFriday. #FollowFriday has become a HUGE waste of time unless you only recommend one or two people with some context – and even then, it’s ruined by spammy retweets and, well, you get the idea.

#FollowFive has much more value due to the nature of the recommendations – instead of endless (and often useless) lists of Twitter users, we now have only five – each with a reason you should follow ‘em.  Try it out!

My #FollowFive for this week:
@MayhemStudios
@LaurieMacomber
@JeskaEatsBrains
@CatherineGrison
@EcosphericBlog