If you label yourself as an expert, you probably aren't. Any restaurant that claims "the best [insert food] in the world" does not have it. Self labeling is pointless and should be avoided. Your customers and consumers will do the labeling for you. They probably already are.
Do you or your company want to be industry leaders in social media? Then get involved. Interact. Put out quality content. Don't just simply join a few networks and then claim you are experts. You will be labeled an expert, when you show that you are an expert.
Two examples: Take a look at the bios of Chris Brogan and B.L. Ochman. Notice that you will not see the word 'expert' on their bio pages. Instead they give their credentials and site case studies that they have worked on.
The title of 'expert' is something that you earn, not something that you can self assign. If you are truly an expert, show it don't say it.
3 comments:
Great post. I actually posed this question on Twitter a few weeks back, "what qualifies someone as an expert?" You make some great points about how experts really never claim they are experts, but rather showcase their experience and work and let others decided who the experts really are.
We see this a lot on Twitter as well. Many people claim they are experts, but never do anything but share their own blog posts and promote themselves. In my opinion, the real experts, some of which you mention in your post, often are more concerned with sharing other's information than sharing their own.
Great post, and dead on :) I feel your frusterations!
Bio page? Oh crap...
I think some patience is required as language catches up to the rapid social changes that we are all caught up in. Is everyone an expert? no, and maybe. One of the fundamental things we see changing is that people are establishing themselves as "mini-brands", and therefore have to present themselves as having content worth listening to... hence "expert". Obviously the linguistics will modify as time goes on. But seeing the effects of this on people's perceptions of themselves and each other, and the democratization of media/information networks is very exciting. But you could argue that most intelligent people have at least one thing they know a lot about... is that an "expert"? No and maybe.
BTW - I'd never refer to myself as an "expert", but I do have a daily twitter about the New Digital Cinema: www.twitter.com/jfrobinson as well as another daily twitter on "Saving the World From Bad Creative" www.twitter.com/nobadcreative
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