Want to be a social media marketing expert? Learn, work and listen!

The immense popularity of social media has resulted in a wave of social media “gurus”, “experts” and “strategists”.

Most of them never asked to be called a “guru” and I have to admit that’s the ones I personally like to “follow” and connect with because they know what marketing is all about and they are down-to-earth great thinkers but, most of all, they achieve results.

But there are others, the self-proclaimed “gurus” that are often people who try to ride the social media wave: the opportunists and fast money makers (don’t worry, they have always existed, long before social media existed).

I say: “live and let live but think twice before you decide to follow their example”.

Focus on your skills, the results you achieve with social media marketing and real metrics and marketing expertise, rather than on positioning yourself as a “social media expert” if you want to be hired as a social media marketing consultant.

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LinkedIn Groups, Facebook Pages, spam and self-promotion

The great thing with LinkedIn Groups and Facebook Pages is that they are started by people you can connect with, and they allow exchanging ideas, asking questions and so on, especially LinkedIn Groups.

I’m a member of several LinkedIn Groups and of course in many of these groups, there are people who “spam”.

Let’s define spam here as adding links to your own company, services or whatever without any value for the discussion but only for SEO or self-promotion purposes.

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