Come on everyone! You need to CRUSH IT!

Kidding. You won’t read any bullshit “shamwow” speech here about making it rich with a 200 dollar flip cam and a YouTube account. Truth is, the power of social media is including everyone else and using their collective creativity to build something new – not just talking about yourself. Being a self promoter doesn’t make you a social media expert. No, it makes you a good self promoter.

It kills me how many people just don’t get it. However, when your follower count on Twitter approaches the 500k mark I could see where it would be easy to get a big head about yourself.

But, but – all it takes is transparency!

Not really. Not only are there lots of things that companies should NOT share (or individuals for that matter) but there are lots of things that just aren’t really that important to share with the public. Raise your hand if you care that Tony Hsieh accidentally filled his car with premium gas instead of plain old unleaded? I like Tony, but that tweet didn’t sell any shoes, nor did it really make him or his brand any more interesting. Transparency like that is really fucking boring.

I still rarely if ever see anyone actually using the creations of others (or even ASKING fans/customers) to create something on behalf of a brand. Today I read that Flickr had its 4 billionth photo posted this past weekend. How many business owners have gone to Flickr and looked for interesting photos that fans of their brand have taken. How many have you commented on, or asked for permission to use in your own online or offline marketing? If there answer is none, you really ought to go out to sites like Flickr, Vimeo or even YouTube and see some of the AMAZING things ordinary, non blow hard people are creating daily. I think you might be shocked at what you find.

What the hell is a social media rockstar anyway?

First and foremost, I HATE the term social media expert, or rockstar. When I read about people claiming to be experts in the social web it makes me want to gouge my eyes out. Being smart and helpful is like, well, being smart and helpful. Recycling “do unto others” line ad nausea on Twitter doesn’t make you an authority on Twitter – it makes you an authority on restating the obvious.

Maybe Chris Brogan is a nice guy – actually, I will go ahead and stipulate that he is. I know he likes to throw out a lot of advice online, and has built his reputation on answering noobish questions from new users on Twitter. However, to see the level of ass kissing that goes on towards him is a little over the top. Seriously, its hard for me to see where the greatness lies. You can’t visit a blog, see an advertised webinar or generally browse over your Twitter feed without seeing his name being tossed out.

We need new social media champions

I know there are lots of people who feel this way about social media experts in general. There are really two reasons you don’t hear from those folks. First, it is completely irrelevant if someone calls themselves a social media expert. Second, for every person who can see through the “formula” that so many of these experts follow to build their online reputation, there are 100 who don’t.

So what is the solution? We need new people to step up, be smart (not pretentious) and talk about social media realistically. No more about how transparent you can be. That’s a great thing to say (and do if your a business owner feeling their way on Twitter or Facebook), but there is much more to it than that. How do you monetize social. How can you empower your users/customers to create, and use that to market your business? What are some actual examples of how you used social media to solve a business problem? No more theory, no more brain dead obvious best practices.

Also, we need people to show some savvy beyond using Twitter. I’m sorry, but Twitter’s best days are now well behind it. It is a missed opportunity. The real focus should be on Facebook, yet you almost never hear these guys talk about it. Why is that? Cool, you have amassed far more people following you than you can possibly ever communicate with efficiently through the medium (Twitter). That doesn’t impress me at all and really, it shouldn’t impress you either.

Recently I wrote a post on Facebook Business Marketing on my work blog. Facebook has become a passion of mine ever since Twitter became overrun with “social media analysts and experts.” Why Facebook? Well, you just don’t see as many of those folks over there.

Anyway check out the post if you are a small business owner (or even, a large business owner) and are interested in how you might go about using Facebook to reach customers. The post details how to create a Facebook Business page, and has effective tactics that I’ve used with clients to promote their businesses on Facebook.

Let me know what you think about it!