Beware of self-promotional experts

Gary Vaynerchuk had built quite a following but there are some smart people who understand that his success is more promotional than reality.  As a friend of mine recently said about Mr Vaynerchuk “Step 1: Have a family that has made a lot of money in the wine business. Step 2: Get a Twitter account. Step 3: Go out and promote yourself as a “thought-leader” who “works for the love, not for the money” because, you know, Step 1.

I can only imagine the number of wasted dollars have gone to buy books or attend lectures by self promotional social media experts.  In my opinion they have done more damage to marketing than bad marketers.  They are often quoted and held in high regard, but when you ask them “what have you actually done to help businesses meet objectives?” their resume is often empty.

I don’t consider myself an expert at anything except learning and being able to develop marketing programs that drive clients’ objectives.  Anyone that says they are an expert is lying because just when you think you know it all, users on the Internet change the game.

How naive are people?  Mr Vaynerchuk has enrolled over 13,ooo people on a course on how to become an online brand.  That’s a sad commentary on just how many dumb people are really out there.  A business associate who is the Director of Social Media for a large CPG company said that “most of these social media experts wouldn’t last a week at most consumer brand companies” and I agree with him.

My love of marketing and low tolerance for bullshit is why I started this blog.  If I get people to read it, I am happy because we are all learning together, but I rarely talk about my BLOG or personal brand to clients because it doesn’t matter.  The only thing that matters is business success not the number of people who see a post on social media.