Some of the comments on the personal post of one of our writers brought up some points that I’ve been thinking about for awhile now. See a friend of mine spent two entire work days at a social media conference. After it was over, I asked him what he learned.
Imagine a very long, brief pause. Then he started talking in circles, so I pushed again, “No, I mean what did you actually learn?” He proceeded to fess up that it was more of a networking event than an actual learning experience. All in all, he didn’t learn anything new. Continue reading →
We all like to go after the “Social Media Experts” claiming there’s no way anyone can a) be an expert in such a new field or b) such a quickly changing field. Beyond the semantics (“expert” vs. “experience” (as much as one can get), “guru,” “knowledgeable in,” “has an instinctive grasp of,” or my favorite undefinable (but likely true in some cases) “just gets”) there’s certainly something to be said for being able to use labels professionally which make us appear to have some higher level of comprehension in our field (and in many cases this is true).
Here’s the kick in the pants — PR pros, and other professionals in the related communications fields, don’t really “know” anything either when it comes to this stuff that a first or second year wouldn’t. Continue reading →
…..a chance to start the day off right.