I can't help but laugh at some of the articles I've seen recently published on some social media related websites. With the recent economic trouble there have been a lot of people (self included) whom have lost their jobs, and the "real social media experts" want to warn you about the "snake oil salesmen" It seems some of the self-aggrandizing authorities on social media have deemed all those without prior experience in the corporate world as unfit for employment in social media. They cite overtly obvious examples of things to look for in an employee that all involve prior work experience managing a companies social media profile. With a typically generic delivery, they then go on to drop pearls of wisdom like "personal use of social media is different than corporate use" and "measuring metrics across many different platforms is important" With dozens of comments praising the author's insight, the commenter almost invariably re-hashes some common sense point the author made, further plunging the reader into the abyss of mediocrity.

Speaking as someone who has worked in social media for a start up in the corporate world, what really stands out about these blog posts are how utterly trite and boring they are. There's never any mention of creativity, drive, or vision, but instead just the same logical rationale anyone would use to determine if someone was qualified to work in social media. The ability to measure ROI and use metrics really isn't that difficult. It doesn't take a rocket scientist ( or even a four-year degree for that matter) to see conversions coming from a popular blog posting on Google Analytics or using Google Alerts to see what's being said about a company in the blogosphere. What is difficult is to find people that have a clear understanding of the site(s) that companies want to establish a presence on, have a creative strategy on how to do so, and have the energy and ability to grow that presence over the course of time.

Oh. And they should have experience. What?

These are the same people that were getting excited to see that "Tom" from MySpace had sent them a message back in 2005. The landscape of social media has been constantly evolving since then and anyone who leans on their "years of experience" could quite possibly be a snake-oil salesman himself. Search engine and website algorithms change. What they were doing in 2006 to network and drive traffic, in some cases, is no longer relevant today. In the world of social media, past success is not neccessarily indicative of future results, you must evolve or die off. The fact of the matter is social media success is a constant battle with new players and rules coming into the game everyday, and they are much more sophisticated and crafty than the comments spammers of MySpace a couple years ago.

I don't know everthing, but I know an insincere attempt at sheilding a job market with bad advice when I see one. Just because someone may have never had prior work experience in a corporate enviroment in social media doesn't mean they are "snake-oil salesmen" These people publishing these articles ought to be ashamed of themselves for not only scaring business owners and hiring managers off potential hires, but their overly simplistic, often lacking any original thought blog posts that serve no purpose but to reaffirm their own standing as an "expert" I would link to the articles I speak of but I don't want to be accused of trying to start some controversy to some how get more traffic to my post and , quite frankly, I dont think these "established experts" deserve a back link anyway. They produce garbage that contributes nothing new to the subject at hand and I wouldn't encourage any one to go there and read it.

I say all this precisely because I have experience and I know what it was like when I ( and every single social media "expert") didn't. If someone didn't take a chance on me, I would have never had the opportunity to know what I know now, and what I'm telling you is this: Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Don't listen to the teachers, listen to the do-ers.