The people on the leading edge of social media have, in general, avoided referring to themselves as experts. It’s partly due to modesty, and partly because everyone who calls themselves an “expert” gets widely mocked as a douchebag in the social media egosystem.

I got a trackback today from a post by Marc Meyer, noting that “if I do a search for a social media expert, I may not be able to find one.” His post looks at the top ten Google results for “social media expert” and notes that only one is someone calling themselves an expert. The rest (including my own post on experts) are somewhat sceptical of people describing themselves as such.

Marc makes a fair point – there is a dearth of useful results when you look for people to help with your social media experts. That makes the selection process for companies all the more important, and was part of the reasoning behind my aforementioned post – you need to know the right questions to ask or you end up signing a contract for snake oil.

With that said, a few months ago I started to wonder when it’s going to be ok to start calling yourself an “expert.” People in other fields do, and social media has been around in an evolving form for ten years or so now. When will it be acceptable?

Part of the problem is that those of us who spend a lot of time thinking about social media and other thoughts of digital PR don’t want to position ourselves in the same pot as the plethora of jonny-come-lately self-entitled “experts” who have come crawling out of the woodwork recently.

Too many “experts” have built their egos on the back of their own “personal brands” but there’s a big difference between marketing yourself and marketing a corporation with stakeholders and competitors. Meanwhile, those of us who are looking to differentiate ourselves have taken to leading by offering advice instead of ego, and letting others judge if we know what we’re talking about.

To answer Marc’s point, here are some of the people I consider to be experts in the field of social media communications. I read their posts, in many cases I’ve met them in person and they’re doing the things that many other people only talk about.

These people aren’t necessarily the most prolific bloggers, but when they write, I read. When they speak, I listen… and their thoughts help me form my opinions, whether I agree with them or not:

• Todd Defren
• Amber Naslund
• David Alston
• Michael O’Connor Clarke 
• Chris Brogan
• KD Paine
• Brian Solis
• Gerald Baron
• Jason Falls
• Shel Holtz

Who do you regard as an expert?

Image credit: Marc Randazza

Since getting involved social media a few years ago, I’ve consistently shied away from describing myself with one word:

Expert.

I’ve also avoided using the word to describe others.

Not only have I shied away from using the word, I’ve been pretty harsh on the people who have used it.

Plenty of other people have similarly railed against social media “experts” – Michael Pinto is one recent example that attracted attention, but others like Brian Solis, Michael Gray, Geoff Livingston and Beth Harte and Susan Murphy have written about it in recent months.

I have avoided the “expert” term in the past for a few reasons:

1. Because I’m still learning every day;
2. Because the term “expert” sets you up for a fall;
3. Calling yourself an “expert” makes you look like a pompous ass – that should be left to other people;
4. Social media as a “discipline” (for want of a better word) has only been around for a few years;
5. Social media is evolving so quickly that few people can really get a handle on everything.

Until recently I’ve agreed with Chris Brogan‘s take that saying you’re a social media expert is like saying you’re an email expert. 

Recently, though, I’ve started to wonder about my stance on “experts.”

• Social media has now been around for a few years;
• A lot of people have now been implementing and advising organizations and people on this for a while;
• We’ve started to see a widening gap between people who get it right and people who get it wrong that makes me think it might be time to differentiate between the professionals and the enthusiasts.

I’m still not going to use the term about myself as I think my original points still stand in relation to me, but I’m starting to consider breaking it out to describe the people that I think consistently hit the nail on the head.

I wonder, does anyone care about this distinction outside of the fishbowl? Are those of us inside the bowl shooting ourselves in the foot while those outside call themselves “experts,” potentially landing more clients in the process? Does it make any difference?

So what do you think? Are we at a point yet where we can talk about social media experts?