Social Media "Experts"
By: Ben Baruch
Sr. Account Executive
I am by no stretch an expert on social media and don’t know many people that are. There are people who are supposedly educated on this and are constantly reading and updating their thoughts and thought processes accordingly, but this is such a new development in the PR industry, I am unsure and look upon people or firms that consider themselves authorities as “houses of cards.” This is especially the case when trying to control the Internet, the proverbial “Wild West.”
Hundreds of millions of people have access to an ever expanding environment, with new tools being associated every day, there is no way a person/firm can control or skew a gigantic population. There is no single person who has a special knowledge or ability that can perform skillfully when dealing with the Internet. In ancient Rome it was called a mob, you and I have never heard of a social savant or person innately being able skew the masses, religion excluded.
I am a PR professional and believe that social media is a strategic tool in the industry. It is a function of the present and future, but a function, not the only means to an end. The term “expert” is used too commonly and acts as an intimidator in the industry, when anyone with access to the Internet, from the lowliest to a CEO can and should be utilized. PR and the Internet are educational devices for the people, for the population – and this reciprocal relationship between PR and the Internet should continue to further develop. There are no experts here, we are all still learning and should engage each other. In hindsight, the only social expert I do know is a bi-sexual promotional machine named Tila Tequila, who has amassed 2,549,428 friends on MySpace.
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