I asked a friend on Twitter how he was able to consistently keep his blog updated with fresh content, and was told to write about my passions. It never occurred to me that this might be the problem. My day to day activities are pretty squarely centered on web apps, and my intuition was to maintain my own content similar to my peers. The reality is that while coding is certainly one of my life’s passions, I find myself increasingly absorbed in the industry that keeps me employed: marketing.

There’s a new hotness the industry is trying to sell right now: social media. Self-proclaimed Social Media Experts are a new breed of marketer, and they’re here to help you make money on Facebook and Twitter. If you want to make use of these sites to promote your business, there is nothing compelling these people can offer over a real marketing expert without the specialization. ¹

I’m wary of this niche over something that’s largely semantic in nature: the word “expert.” We can debate the meaning of the word, but I have never met a successful internet marketer who wasn’t able to make social media work for them by applying the same basic common sense tactics. If you’ve got 140 characters, you need a hook. Something that grabs the user’s attention. Most marketing works that way. You also need something compelling at the other end. Your call to action has to lead to something that some people will actually want. Good marketing can sell a bad product, but it won’t sustain a bad business in the long-term. This, again, is nothing new. ²

There is also the aspect of how much time it takes to attain a mastery of anything. Geniuses do exist, but they rarely manifest in the form of a marketer. Most people, myself and marketers included, have to work at something to get better at it. We progress at different speeds, but the slope of progress generally trends north so long as diligent effort is paid to a task. The Social Media Expert has no defined task, so what specifically are they mastering? There may be people who might actually qualify for the title, but the only ones who ever seem to come close were already excellent marketers before the name change. It pains me to see an individual tag oneself with a ridiculous label in order to fit in, but what is advertising if not compelling demographics to do something en masse?

I had the sad realization the other day that for as much money as marketers are making on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and the like, the people behind the applications themselves are usually running in the red, with no clear way to the black. Facebook looks like it’s going to figure out how to make money long-term, and it’s certainly got the largest userbase, but the reality is that while advertising in the United States alone is a $150bn industry, that spend is increasingly spread over a larger pie, and at some point there simply won’t be enough to support it all. It is true that advertising dollars are shifting online at an increasing rate, but that money is primarily going into classic online ads. Google already owns the lion’s share of what’s being spent online, and combined with its closest competitors makes up the overwhelming majority of the entire online advertising market. Facebook is banking its future on grabbing enough of the advertising pool, but their concept seems to focus around highly targeted banner and text ads – classic online advertising. Right now, if you want to make real money online, you are still monetarily better off spending your advertising dollars on email programs and pay-per-click advertising, or a combination of the two. There is no need to spend money on a social media expert.

Nine times out of ten, if I find a company’s Twitter marketing spammy, a self-proclaimed SME is at the other end of the keyboard. It’s hard to mask the scent of bullshit when you only have 140 characters to make your case.

You should absolutely be on Twitter and Facebook, but the companies that do this best are companies that have a person in-house who actually gets it: someone who primarily uses social networking sites to network socially. Need an example? Take a look at game developer Infinity Ward’s Robert Bowling. Better known by his gamertag, @fourzerotwo has been tweeting and blogging constantly about Modern Warfare 2, their upcoming release. ³ Earlier this year they launched #mw2, a site that allowed people to submit suggestions for the game by posting a tweet with the #mw2 hashtag. It’s the best use of Twitter for marketing I’ve ever seen, and it was built by a very small team headed up by Richard Henry, an English web developer – not a marketer.

Social media is too young for anyone to really be an expert. At best, what we have today are Social Media Technicians. They know how to work the buttons in a way most marketing execs don’t, but there isn’t a skill in and of itself they have mastered. I honestly get the impression most of them just spend so much time on Facebook that they had to figure out a way to make it pay the bills.

I have no doubt there is plenty of money to be made here, and I don’t blame anyone for capitalizing on the market opportunity, especially in this economic climate. That being said, marketing dollars are normally the first to go when times get tough, so what you do spend needs to deliver. A smart email program and PPC campaign will almost always be better for you if the product you’re selling doesn’t have general mass-market appeal. Go ahead and spend ad dollars on Facebook, but trust a PPC expert to set that up.

1. Personally, I blame CNN. These people were out and about beforehand, but as soon as mom and pop heard about “The Twitter,” I knew it was too late. ↩
2. Unless, of course, you work for GM. ↩
3. Disclaimer: My enthusiasm for this game knows no bounds. ↩

In an rare bit of jackassery, I passed out on the couch when I got home today. As a result, I’m behind on my writing.  Luckily, I stumbled into co-authoring an article over at the Mighty Interactive blog. My colleague Eric and I continued a conversation we started a month ago.  If you’re looking for something interesting to read, start at the beginning and work your way up.

Also: I had to debate whether or not to link to something I’d written on my employer’s blog.

This is my personal blog, and nothing here should be construed as representative of the views or positions of my employer, colleagues, or clients.