Self Proclaimed 'Social Media Experts' - damaging

I mentioned the Influence Project a while back on my personal blog, plus if I recall I think I tweeted my link three times. Just to see how I did. Then a lot of articles came out against the whole thing. At first I thought it to be the usual bunch of people shooting down a good idea but looking a bit closer it all started making sense.

First off itstartswith.us wanted to turn the influence project into something meaningful, rather then a simple clicks equal influence project. Taken from the first posting :

We’re going to pool our collective networks together for one common goal on Wednesday, August 11th. We will help everyone in our own communities to touch hearts and change lives in a way that’s meaningful to them. To use their influence in a positive way. Just one day to work as a team and make a difference – together. We’re going to do something the world has never seen before. We’re gonna turn this ship around and take it somewhere new. Somewhere a little bit better. Because it would be a shame to waste all the energy and attention that’s already been spent on this project without doing something meaningful.

Eventually the cause had to end, Mark Borden from fast company had responded to itstartswith.us saying they were not interested in working with them as they wanted to move the project (in what they thought) was a more meaningful direction.

So that was that,

Another situation the influence project caused was that of a self proclaimed social media expert, DotJenna.

To get my point, have a look at her intro video into the world of social media :



Instead of dwelling on her great editing skills, DotJenna decided to enter the influence project about a month late. Now I admit I sent out 3 tweets and two facebook status updates, that was it. I didn't want to do anymore in case it seemed spammy. dotjemma however took the approach of continually tweeting 'vote for me' 'please click'. Soon some popular bloggers started seeing these fast company ads (which they were) trending all over the place. One blogger, Mack Collier ,tweeted how he was sick of all these tweets appearing. DotJemma decided to take him on, telling him not to begrudge her as she needs this. What started then was a back and forth argument on twitter between them. What Mack realised is that he had never spoken to her before this request and now she was chatting to him just to convince him to promote her to his followers. This was Mack Colliers Response.

If DotJenna was as skilled as her video makes out or her site for that matter, she wouldn't need to spam with continuous tweets or harassing other twitterers. I understand it would be a boost to her and get some good promotion from Fast Company, but there was not strategy to her campaign. All it consisted of was pleading and begging, that was it. Shes already released a press statement about being placed in the top 100 like she achieved this through her true influential power. Looking forward to her interview in FastCompany. Rumour has it, Guy Kawasaki is at number one. He probably tweeted it once.

This got me thinking, the twitter and facebook fanpage pyramid schemes. The snake oil sales people holding 'conferences' for companies and teaching potential clients how to get hundreds of thousands of followers or fans. I've recently inherited a twitter page for a new client, over 5000 followers and 12 tweets. I think not, I'm now cleaning it up - I have to. In a few months time I want this client to be able to tweet and loads of followers interact, retweet, spread the word because they value the postings. I tested a simple tweet that included a really cool giveaway, not one retweet, or @. Nada, zero. You would think at least one from 5000.

What happened was whatever agency looked after this before they had obviously gone to one of those 'auto follow twenty to gain 5000 followers' So now I'm cleaning up loads of Mortage Brokers and Bible Belt evangelists. Not the audience the client wanted to target. Clearly

This is what a lot of these fly by night self proclaimed social media experts sell. They convince people that its about the amount of fans, not the quality. I've seen presentations where people are told to create 20 twitter accounts and start retweeting yourself and following and so on. Really? Someone actually presented that, and got paid for it.

There are a lot of twitterkings and twitterqueens out there selling these chain-mail pyramid schemes and people like myself and the team at The Lounge Group have to deal with that fall out. Explaining to clients about the slow burn, or the non-campaign-lead-social-activity. It's like back in the nineties when Front page first came out and every man and his dog was now a web developer. Now Social media is allowing these 'experts' to come out the woodwork.

All DotJenna achieved was to make the Influence Project lose even more credibility. Whats the opposite of Influence?

Now go to my twitter account, click follow, tell ten friends, pay £10 and by Friday you will have half of Russia following you. It worked for me. ;-)

This blog also appears on Brand Republic's blog, The Wall