Social Media Experts of All Kinds

I feel like a small rant…It seems that anyone with a Facebook page is a social media expert these days. I stumbled across a company that positions itself as a “Social Media Expert.” A post they made on Facebook discussed the importance of setting up your Facebook page as a business page if you are a business. All OK, dandy, and sound advice, but this business claims to be a social media management company that uses a personal page. How ironic! They say the main reason to be set up on a business page is the lapse of time it may take from the time the friend request comes in and your response to it. I’m unsure whether to laugh or cry when a business says that from a personal page. I can be good at doing as I say, not as I do, but this is one of those instances that you want to try. Plain and simple, it is Facebook policy for a business to be set up on a business page, not a personal page. They operate their business on a personal page and do not even center their avatar. All their posts have just half of their logo appearing, which is one of my pet peeves. Smart business owners do their homework. If you need to choose someone to handle their social media, you should hold them to the same high standards you have for your business. They should at least be able to cover the basics on their own business page: a custom 2×6 profile image, a 2×2 avatar centered on posts, and a landing page, for starters. If they cannot do these three things, then they are just trying to cash in on a buzz category that many business owners still do not fully understand. Today on NRR, Andy Kessler was talking about the IPO offers from social media companies (LinkedIn, etc.) and comparing them to the IPO offers of over a decade ago, “If the dot com boom was at a ten, then right now we’re at a 3… He then went on to say tongue in cheek, “that when you start getting companies with no business plan and no business model and just social media in their title and go public, then we’ll be at a 8, 9 or 10” That gave me a good laugh.