Why I will never ever hire a social media expert/guru/savant/rockstar.

Glad someone took the time to put this on paper.

I have been saying this for over a year to anyone of my friends who would listen. My two cents? For business, social media is simply a new channels of communication. A new way to service your customers. This excerpt is from an article called, "Why I will never ever hire a social media expert." Though I don't agree with everything stated in this article, it makes a few interesting points. It is not that business don't need someone well versed in social media - rather business' require someone with marketing experience and whom is comfortable, knowledgeable or at the very least resourceful when it comes to social media. It is an old school meets new school, kind of thing.

Social media is just another facet of marketing and customer service. Say it with me. Repeat it until you know it by heart. Bind it as a sign upon your hands and upon thy gates. Social media, by itself, will not help you.

We’re making the same mistakes that we made during the DotCom era, where everyone thought that just adding the term .com to your corporate logo made you instantly credible. It didn’t. If that’s all you did, you emphasized even more strongly how pathetic your company was. You weren’t “building a new paradigm while shifting alternate ways of focusing customers on the clicks and mortar of an organizational exchange.” No -- you were simply an idiot who’d be out of business in six months.

Ready for the ultimate kicker? We still haven’t learned! We got thirsty again, and are drinking the same ten-year-old Kool-Aid without so much as asking for ice. Rather than embracing this new technology and merging it with what we’ve learned already, we’re throwing off our clothes and running naked in the rain, waving our hands in the air, sure that this time it’ll be different, because this time it’s better!
“It’s not about building a website anymore! It’s so much cooler! It’s about Facebook, and fans, and followers, and engagement, and influence, and…”

Will you please shut up before you make me vomit on your shoes?

IT’S ABOUT GENERATING REVENUE THROUGH SOLID MARKETING AND STELLAR CUSTOMER SERVICE, JUST LIKE IT’S BEEN SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME.

It’s about transparency. It’s about not lying to your customers, and thinking that a good Twitter apology will suffice when you’re caught. It won’t, and you’ll lose. Customers will run away in droves, because they can. They can go wherever they want now -- it doesn’t matter how loyal they were in the past. Lie to them and get caught, and say goodbye.

[ed. note: As per an anonymous commentator...here is a follow up response to the article I referenced in this blog post . Click here.]

Read the entire article here, article found viaJamie