Gary Vaynerchuk recently said on Techcrunch TV that “99.5% of social media experts are clowns.” His comments were quickly rebuked by many from the social media expert community including Dani Klein with his tweet “@garyvee I’m a big fan, but your comments re: “social media experts = clowns” do nothing to help grow our industry & are somewhat insulting.” Gary then responded with a video on his own site clarifying his remarks about how there isn’t enough business intelligence in most social media expert’s experience to justify their positions and decisions.
The reason I bring this up is that Gary points out the lack of industry standards in measuring expertise in the field and Dani points out the frustration by real experts in trying to get noticed above the hacks. Both Gary and Dani, however, fail to lay any blame for these issues. So I thought I’d have some fun with that. The real culprit here, to some degree, are people like me. Well not me exactly but the agency I work for and the rest of the agency world. Let me explain.
Social media is hot. More and more television dollars are going towards digital and more and more digital dollars are going towards social. Unlike when digital exploded onto the scene 5-10 years ago and both television and print agencies ignored the opportunity hoping to let it pass, they’re not planning on missing the social media ride.
Every type of agency wants in on the action but all have different measures of success. PR agencies attack social as an extension of outreach that they do in the print and media world. You get an article on HuffPo, you win. Creative agencies have lots of impressive visual content and out-of-the-box ideas but most campaigns don’t blow up like Old Spice. There is more to social than a big splash and that, typically, is what creative agencies are looking for. Media buying agencies focus on just that, media buying. Social media to them are ads on Facebook, Twitter promotions and YouTube takeovers.
Then there is the social media agency, a new crop of agencies that try to juggle all the other agencies in the air and show them how working together and weaving in some social strategy and execution can actually generate that earned media we’re all looking for. I am a Senior Director at one of these agencies (M80) and trust me, it’s a delicate balancing act every day. Everyone wants to cut you out because they think they can do social and don’t need you.
Until the clients (i.e. brands) out there help define who controls social, you won’t have consensus on relevant experience and standards of excellence to measure experts against. Secondly, unless enough real experts out there start providing the proper education to clients about social strategy, execution and ROI, they won’t be able to weed out those who claim to understand the business without any real business experience.
