Sarah’s question:
“Hi Bruce,
I have a personal question regarding social media. In a nutshell, I’m working to hone my social media skills; keeping up with the ever-changing industry and learning everything there is to know so that I can become an expert in the field. I want to know everything! But, as you know, it’s an extremely overwhelming industry and there is no textbook that is available to teach you everything. I’ve been hearing a lot about these social media certification courses, but I’m not sure that they’re worth the money. So I wanted to talk to an expert (you!) about your thoughts on this.
Thank you in advance,
Sarah.”
My response:
“I don’t know much about these certification courses, Sarah, but I can’t imagine they’re particularly helpful unless perhaps you’re interested in learning programming.
Instead, building your own robust online social media (SM) presence would be your best way to keep up-to-speed on the practical realities and changes in the space.
I’ve had clients tell me they want to learn about SM but they don’t want to actually do it — what they’re looking for is the book they can read that’ll show them what to do. Their question is simple: what book should they read?
My answer is that learning SM is like learning to swim (SwiM, get it?). You can read all the books you want on swimming but if I row you out into the ocean and throw you over board, you’re not going to be able to swim very well, are you? And I can even toss you the book but if it’s not made of Styrofoam it’s not going to help keep you above the water either.
The way to learn how to do it is to do it.
I do recommend you attend various conference and seminars — that’s where you’ll find people who are passionate about staying ahead of the bleeding edge in the technologies and who will be able to help you. Maybe you should even read some great books (The Viral Loop or Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, for example) about what others have done. But at some point you’ve just got to say ‘What the hell’ and jump in with two feet.
Open an account on WordPress and start a blog. Learn to upload it and monitor it. Promote it on Twitter and Facebook and Google+ and LinkedIn. Figure out how to upload video. Repurpose your text as video blogs (VLOGS) and create your own channel. Figure out the difference between YouTube and Vimeo. Look into SlideShare and Quora. Start building lists and email your posts to your followers using Listrak, Constant Contact, MailChimp or some other email-marketing provider. Figure out how to reduce your spam complaints. Analyze your click-throughs and unsubscribes. That’ll teach you more about SM than any certification class ever will.
Don’t feel overwhelmed. Remember that you don’t have to do it all at once but you do have to do it. Otherwise you’ll just be sitting on the sidelines, books in hand, watching the world pass you by.
Don’t know if this is what you wanted to hear but it’s my truth. I hope it helps you.
All my best,
B”