How to Become a Social Media Expert
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In the last blog post, I shared the old-school Japanese martial arts analogy of apprentice, journeyman, and master as it relates to social media. Here’s the quirk in that particular analogy: because social media as a field is new and evolving, there really can’t be any lifelong masters yet. So what’s a social media practitioner to do, and how does one become an expert?
Again, looking to the past to see into the future, there was a practice called musha shugyo, loosely translated as a warrior’s quest. Typically, after a samurai learned everything he could from a teacher, his teacher kicked him out of the school and forced the practitioner to go wandering the countryside, looking for opportunities to test his skills. The practitioner would look for warlords to serve, other schools to spar with, opportunities to put to use the skills he had learned under the tutelage of his teacher.
After the warrior quest ended, the practitioner would have a deep knowledge of their skills, tools, and contexts in which they could be helpful. The insights they gained during their years-long quests would serve to inspire them, and would eventually transform them into masters.
For social media practitioners, that’s more or less where we are. Once we’ve learned the basics of social media – blogging, podcasting, presence networks, etc. – we can pursue a few different options for our future.
Fishbowl
The most common and unfortunate option is to stay in the fishbowl, to continue talking to each other only, patting each other on the back for being cutting edge, and stagnating as we wait for the next shiny object to appear for us to flock to. In the process, we accomplish nothing and make an awful lot of noise. We fail to make any difference in the world, but think we do by talking constantly about it.
Arbitrage
Some practitioners choose the route of pursuing additional disciplines outside of social media, looking for knowledge, practices, and ideas to bring back into social media. This includes studying other forms of marketing, systems, operations, etc. so that the practices and ideas from other disciplines can be adapted to be useful in social media, something that Jay Moonah alluded to in yesterday’s blog post.
Musha Shugyo
The most productive of the practices a social media practitioner can do after learning and becoming competent at the basics is the musha shugyo, the testing period. Take the skills you have and apply them in real world contexts, for real world results. Look for opportunities to volunteer with charities, non-profits, or other organizations if your own company won’t give social media a try. Above all else, put the tools of social media to work, so you can see their power and limitations, what works, what bombs, and in what contexts each tool is appropriate.
The road to expertise, the road to mastery, is a long one, but a worthwhile journey. As social media continues to unfold and grow, the ability to do productive, useful things with the tools we have will continue to grow as well, if only we have the will to apply ourselves.
One final note. In Japanese culture, you never take the title of master – it’s culturally inappropriate. What happens, however, is that your students apply the title to you as their acknowledgement of all you have shared with them, and proudly refer to you as a master, an expert, etc.
In the West, in the 21st century, our obsession with branding and labels means that we often make bold claims we can’t back up, like social media expert, social media guru, etc. How do you know who is the real deal? Look to what their students and peers say about them, not what they say about themselves.
Ultimately, you’ll probably be the last to get the memo about being an expert. You’ll look back on your journey and see not social media, but lives saved, lives changed and improved, products and services bought and sold, brands built, communities bettered. The measurements that count most to you will likely have nothing to do with friends, followers, betas, or invitations, but with differences and positive changes made, accomplishments logged.
When you reach that point, I can only hope and work to be there by your side.
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Who is a social media expert?
Who is a social media expert?
During our drive to Podcasters Across Borders, Chris Brogan and I discussed an awful lot of things (14 hours in the car will do that) and one of those things is expertise. From my perspective, expertise follows a very distinct, well defined pattern that is measurable and obvious. If you’re marketing yourself as an expert, or you’re a business or marketer looking to hire an expert, perhaps this framework will help.
In the martial arts, there are complementary ideas of apprentice, practitioner, and master practitioner, as well as form, variation, and freedom. Even George Lucas copies this to a degree with the Padawan, Jedi Knight, and Jedi Master.
Apprentice / Beginner / Padawan
At the beginning of any journey, we begin with form. Adherence to form is essential to learn how to use the tools, techniques, and basics of whatever it is we’re studying, whether it’s martial arts, social media, plumbing, etc. We learn form from our teachers, who are the absolute authorities in our journey. Deviation from form is discouraged because it can lead to distraction, ultimately causing you to learn less effectively. This is the stage when the apprentice learns how to hammer nails, stoke fires, roll dough, write blog posts, etc., all under the care of a master instructor who guides the apprentice through early hazards.
Journeyman / Practitioner / Jedi Knight
In the middle of a journey, we practice variation. We now know the basics of our tools and have achieved competence with them. We can build a basic house, we can forge a sword, we can submit a story to Digg and get it to be relatively popular. At this point in our journey, we start examining variations on form to discover principle. A house doesn’t always have to be four square walls and a roof to provide effective shelter. A sword strike doesn’t always have to be on a cardinal angle. A tool like Twitter doesn’t just have to be used for presence and conversation.
Our teachers change as well, from absolute authorities to puzzlers and riddlers. They set up conditions for us to begin making our own discoveries, rather than just hand us knowledge on a plate for us to faithfully consume. Our teachers and masters inspire us to find the resources in ourselves, to experiment, accepting that we’ll screw up and break things from time to time. A sword blade will crack in the forge, a video will render wrong, a cake will fall – all of these are normal as we vary from form.
This is the most dangerous part of the journey, the point at which we can fall prey to our own Dark Side of the Force, in believing that we’re better than we actually are. Our teachers will also set us up for minor failures to remind us that we still have limits, that variation too far from the form has consequences. We’ve all seen that person who declares themselves an expert at this point, too early in their journey.
Master / Expert / Jedi Master
As we reach legitimate mastery, we leave form behind. The principles themselves remain timeless, but we no longer need variation to discover them, as we know them by heart, by practice, by long experience. A master carpenter can build a house just by eye, discarding the need for rulers and blueprints. A master baker doesn’t even bother to measure, yet the bread always turns out perfectly. A social media expert generates impressive real world results – money raised, sales made, lives saved – using whatever tools are appropriate, free of dogmatic handcuffs that say a blog must only be used in this fashion, or Twitter can only be used in that way. If the tool doesn’t exist, the expert simply crafts it themselves.
Our teachers reveal a wonderful and horrifying truth at this point in our journey, that they are fellow explorers along the path. There’s even a certification in Japanese martial arts, called menkyo kaiden, which isn’t just a way of saying that you’re great at something, but that your teacher has run out of things to teach you. You’ve learned as much as they know, and now you and your teacher are fellow explorers, making discoveries and sharing them together. You’re fellow explorers along the path, and while your teacher will always have an honored place in your life, they’re no longer responsible for your development and care. You stand on your own two feet.
Here’s the thing about true mastery, true expertise. It takes years upon years to get there, more years by many than social media has even existed. Podcasting has been around for 4 years or so. Blogging has been around for 10 years or so. Other disciplines like carpentry, martial arts, etc. have been around for millennia. For someone to appoint themselves an expert, a master in a discipline less than a decade old is puffery, plain and simple. There are certainly plenty of people who are very talented at what they do. There are also a lot of people who are peddling snake oil, promoting their latest goods with impressive sales pitches and not much to back them up.
Are there experts, masters in social media? I’d have to say no, not right now. There are leaders, pioneers, explorers, folks who are at the front of the trail, clearing the way and stumbling onto all the hazards. Eventually, if they stay the course, those people will become masters in their own right, but right now we’re all still learning variation, still discovering the principles of social media as the platform evolves.
You can always tell who is a pioneer. They’re the ones with the arrows in them.
How do you tell the difference between a legitimate leader and someone who’s just trying to make some money off of you? Look, as we have for centuries, at the results they produce. If you’re thinking about hiring someone to help you out with social media, see what other results they’ve produced. Have they run campaigns with real world results? Have they made impressive sales, saved lives, changed lives, made a difference?
Where’s Yoda when you need him?
In the next blog post, I’ll talk about another peculiarity of social media – what to do if you have no master teacher to help you.
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An Epic Battle: Conversation vs. Monetization
At Podcasters Across Borders, Chris Brogan and I had an epic fight over conversation vs. monetization, over community vs. marketing. Here’s the video of this late night “session” which will set the tone for podcasting for years to come…
… or at least until the next conference to which we bring lightsabers.
Hat tip to Chel Pixie and Whitney Hoffman for the camerawork.
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Podcasters Across Borders 2008 Review
Podcasters Across Borders 2008 Review
Podcasters Across Borders 2008 has wrapped up, and I’m back in the office. Another terrific weekend, full of great friends and interesting discussions. A few takeaways from this weekend that I picked up:
Sylvain Grand-Maison showed a great slide of song structure and podcast structure – comparing the two, and suggesting that the same ideas that make a song worth listening to could make your podcast worth listening to.
Jay Moonah did a great demo of how the medium is the message by having a blindfolded volunteer identify the quality of a promotional message by the paper it was printed on.
Tod Maffin from the CBC explained about “IT” or the quality that makes a podcast terrific. One of his suggestions was to speak more intimately, reminding us that a significant portion of people listen to podcasts with headphones or earbuds; speaking to them as if you’re shouting across the room (radio) is a mismatch for how people listen.
There were plenty of other discussions I had this weekend, and I’ll be making some changes from a technical perspective as well as a marketing perspective for the various media adventures we all participate in
Oh, and I won a Blue Snowball mic, which was a nice treat, and soon to be a nice treat for the listeners of the Financial Aid Podcast.
Many thanks to Mark Blevis and Bob Goyetche for putting on another fantastic conference.
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Amazon Kindle Blog Directory – 30% rev share
Image by tnkgrl via Flickr
Submit your blog or podcast show notes to Amazon’s Kindle directory. They offer 30% rev share on your blog if they choose it for inclusion – and since you’re blogging ANYWAY, you may as well get some incremental revenue if you’re chosen to be worthy of inclusion!
Compensation terms:
6. Subscription Royalties. For each calendar month during the Term, provided you are not in breach of your obligations under this Agreement, we will pay you royalties (“Publisher Royalties”) equal to thirty percent (30%) of Subscription sales revenues actually received by us from sales of Subscriptions to your Publications during the month, net of any bad debt, credits and returns. Subscription sales revenues means only amounts actually received by us for the sale of Subscriptions to your Publications and excludes any fees paid for any product or service other than a Subscription, even if sold together with or required to make use of any Subscription. If we sell a Subscription together with any other content subscription at one undistinguished price (the “Single Price”), Subscription sales revenues for such sale will be allocated on a pro rata basis based on the then-current stand-alone retail price for each individual title included as part of such sale (after taking into account any discounts accorded each participating title in the Single Price sale).
7. Payment Terms. All payments will be due as of the date ninety (90) days following each calendar month of the Term or portion thereof in which Publisher Royalties have accrued. We will, concurrently with payment, provide statements providing detail regarding the amounts of Subscription sales revenue for your Publications collected during the applicable months. All payments shall be made in U.S. dollars. If Publisher is unable to accept Electronic Funds Transfer (“EFT”) payments, we will pay by check, but we will charge a fee of $8.00 per check and will issue checks only if the amount payable is at least $100; if Publisher needs to be paid by check we will accrue and withhold payments until the total amount due is at least $100. All statements shall be conclusive, final and binding, unless Publisher gives Amazon written notice stating the specific basis for objection within six (6) months after the date rendered. You shall not maintain any action or proceeding against us with respect to any such statement unless you commence that action or suit within six (6) months following the date that you provide Amazon with the written notice referred to in the immediately preceding sentence. Any such action or proceeding shall be limited to a determination of the amount of monies, if any, payable by Amazon to you for the accounting periods in question, and your sole remedy shall be the recovery of those monies with no interest thereon.
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