Those who have accumulated some early knowledge about Social Media Marketing (SMM) bemoan the number of self-proclaimed experts that crowd this new field. Indeed, thousands of Internet professionals are trying to capitalize on the spectacularly successful platform for marketing purposes. It is also true that much of the “expertise” out there is pretty generic and that the myriad blogs and comments often add little original insight. For independent marketing professionals who want to make a business out of SMM, the frustration of not being able to preserve an early lead and differentiate their value is understandable. But it is all part of the new way the game is played. Much of it has to do with the fact that there is just so much more information available online. Here are a few musings from a non-expert…
- The glut of so-called experts is due to the fact that barriers to entry are relatively low for marketing services. As a result, SMM is experiencing this gold rush-type craze.
- This field is very new, so almost anyone can call themselves an expert. Of course, there are very few real experts. Customers themselves have very limited experience on how to select an SMM professional that can add real value to their business. This lack of clarity encourages more people to enter the field.
- Right now, Social Media is all about learning how this new communication platform works. There is a good deal of experimentation taking place even within the confine’s of today’s cramped marketing budgets. That is actually good. It is the process by which a minority will discover the best recipes to make Social Media work for Marketing.
- Those who find the best learning opportunities and learn the fastest will establish strong competitive positions, which means that when the field matures, differences in expertise will become clearly apparent and fewer “experts” will remain.
It’s not just that there is more knowledge being shared publicly. There is a parallel phenomenon at work in that the paradigm of knowledge creation itself is changing. A good fraction of the body of knowledge for new fields like SMM now seems to be actually created in public through an unstructured collective process in blogs, online comments, podcasts, twits, webinars, etc all of which amounts to one big Wiki, thus empowering many people to enter the field armed with way more than just the basics. As usual, the truly valuable insights will be revealed only to paying clients; much of the rest is teaser material. But what is openly available is empowering many more people than ever before.
The question then becomes: who can market the new tools the best and apply them in the most effective way to deliver financiallly tangible results for clients. The talent and hard work required to make that happen remains pretty much the same as it ever was.
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Tags: marketing, SMM, social media