Tweet, Tweet!!! Isn’t social media fun? Look at all the people you’re connecting with! What value you’re adding to their lives. Why, with your experience, you should become a social media expert!
What’s that? You say you’re not sure if you’re experienced enough to be a social media expert? Pish posh! If you have an Internet connection that’s pretty much all the experience you need. Still, if you need convincing, we can make a checklist of the things you need to consider yourself a true expert.
1. Start a Blog
In order to truly show off your expertise, you’ll have to have a blog where you discuss things like “How to Not Be an Ass on Twitter” or “How to Be Authoritative Without Sounding Like a Douchebag.” Don’t worry if you don’t really know how to do these things, if it reads well, no one will know you’re winging it. The important thing is to sound like you know what social media is, even if you can’t explain it. Bonus points if you can tell other people how to behave using social media, even if you don’t actually do any of these things yourself. True social media experts are better at preaching than practicing anyway.
2. Talk on Twitter
All social media experts have Twitter accounts. Some of them even have 500 followers! You’ can easily spot the other experts because they use words such as “expert,” or “guru” in their profiles. Look for these people to follow as they’re the ones who know best. Don’t worry that they have less than 1,000 followers or follow 10 people in return. If they weren’t experts it wouldn’t say so under their names, would it?
Now, in order to look like you know what you’re doing on Twitter, follow these rules. Don’t worry, all the experts do it so it’s OK.
- Follow Friday: To follow Friday, simply load a Tweet full of @’s with #FF at the beginning or end. Get as many people in there as you can. You needn’t worry about telling your 12 followers why to follow these people. You’re an expert, they’ll listen to you. If you recommend the same five people to your same ten followers each week, they’re sure to follow along too.
- Retweeting: Experts and Authorities do a lot of retweeting, especially if it’s about them. Don’t be afraid to retweet articles and quotes about you. Every now and then you should retweet someone else, but it’s not necessary. There’s are “I’s in social media, not “you’s,” right?
- Share links: If you’re a social media expert, do complain about people who are spammy with their links, but remember, it’s OK to tweet your own stuff all the time. Because, after all, you’re the expert.
3. Connect on Facebook and Foursquare
What’s that? You say Facebook isn’t private and Foursquare is silly? That’s OK. You can still be a social media expert without actually using or knowing a thing about the various social media tools. You read about how other people use it so that’s good enough. You have a blog to talk about your expertise, and that’s really all you need.
4. Learn the Lingo
A sure sign of a true social media expert is to use the right words. Try these on for size “transparency,” “branding”, or the “social media space.” We can worry about definitions later, just practice using these in conversation or your blog posts. Also consider “trust,” “value,” and “authenticity.” There, now you’ll impress everyone with your advanced social media vocabulary.
5. Make lots of cool little charts
Nowadays social media experts are “measuring” social media. (Quick, add that to your list of buzz words!) this means they’re making up lots of fancy charts and diagrams to show everyone how smart they are and how this stuff works. The truly impressive charts have lots of colorful graphs and bubbles. If you can throw in terms such as “ROI” and “influence” you’re golden.
As you can see, with a very small time investment and a Twitter account, you too can enter the exciting world of social media. What will you Tweet about today?
