Why Social Media “Experts” Are So Dangerous

Every conference I’ve been to this year is filled with REALTORS^® saying the same thing:

“I’m doing something wrong because my social media marketing campaign isn’t working yet.”

It seems that everyone chasing the “Social Media Dragon” thinks that it’s THEIR fault that things aren’t clicking yet. But here’s the problem: IT’S WORKING FOR ALMOST NO ONE!!

Only a select few who engage in an organized, consistent campaign designed to generate results are seeing benefit from social media tools – for the other 99% of people frantically throwing ‘look at me, I’m a REALTOR^®‘ into their tweets and facebook feeds, it’s a total waste of time… Only the “Experts” are benefiting.

Why Social Media “Experts” exist

Here’s an interesting statistic: the two most common complaints about “social media” books on Amazon are:

• they list many social media resources, but don’t tell which ones are best
• they give absolutely NO empirical evidence of success in proven case studies

Case and point:

This review is from: Guerrilla Social Media Marketing: 100+ Weapons to Grow Your Online Influence, Attract Customers, and Drive Profits (Paperback)

Jay Conrad Levinson has written a book of ideas that he dreamed up, but are not based on success stories, case studies or research.

A small business owner would go broke trying all these ideas because there is no proof that they work, or which ideas work best.

It is very easy for an author to write a book that sounds like he has some real knowledge. But very hard to document what actually works in business. This book is NOT based on reality, nor will you learn what really works in social media.

I have a degree in PR with a marketing minor and have worked in the field for 20 years. I like books even if I only get one good idea, but this book is just fluff.

If you really want to get it, wait ’till it’s $1.

Social Media Experts exist because Social Media exists. Here’s a very interesting statistic from a 2009 survey done by business.com (see survey here):

“71% of companies involved in social media have been doing so for LESS THAN 2 YEARS.”

That means that most 10 year-old-children have more experience with social media technologies than the “Experts.”

Why Social Media “Experts” Don’t Have Meaningful Statistics

The reason most “experts” don’t have statistics or case-studies about social media successes (expect anecdotal stories about themselves) is because there are almost no statistics available. There are three reasons for this:

• Social media is new
• Plausible statistics about revenue are very difficult to extract from social media campaigns
• “Experts” can baffle their audiences with the tremendous growth statistics about facebook/twitter and generally don’t need successful case-studies to sell their products (seminars, books, etc.)

My advice: the next time someone tries selling you on social media marketing, try asking them the following questions:

1. Can you provide me with any real-life examples (with statistics) of social media marketing success stories?
2. Can you provide me with actual REVENUE numbers, not just website traffic data?
3. Do you have exact dollar figures, not just percentages (it’s easy to double profits in one year if you only made $100 in the year before)?

I’d love to hear the answers…

Why Most Social Media Campaigns Fail

Here’s a great quote from the business.com survey conducted in 2009:

“Based primarily on case studies of larger company (500+ employees) initiatives, social media analysts often cite over-commitment to too many social media initiatives at one time as a driving factor behind poor social media performance and abandoned initiatives.”

The study goes on to say that:

• 64% of businesses participate have active social media initiatives (derived statistic)
• Employees or contractors working on these initiatives have little business
  social media experience (65% have less than two years of experience) and spend an average of one day per week (18% of their time!!!) involved with company social media initiatives

The study also says that a large percentage of social media users are in the real estate and construction industries.

On the guidance of the “Experts” people are blasting out in every form of social media imaginable and burning up, on average, a full working day-per-week doing it! If the average career REALTOR^® (assuming $90k/yr) invested in Social Media according to “Expert” advice, it could cost him/her over $16000 every year in lost productivity. Yikes.

Conclusion

“Social Media Experts” are dangerous. Unless they can provide you with concrete statistics and numerous case-studies with real numbers, you’d be much safer sticking to existing, money-making promotional techniques.