My Podcast Rant on Bad Infographics false stats and so-called social media experts

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Today’s podcast is more of a rant. We cover everything from customers service, the dangers of believing what you see on Infographics, and my response to Peter Shankmans comments on “Why All Social Media Experts Need To Die in a Fire.”

I cover it briefly in the podcast but here’s my thoughts on Shankman’s statements. It’s been a full week since the post but people keep emailing me asking my opinion on his blog post. (On a side note: nice work on Peter’s part for all the traffic generated).

Here’s my response to a client:

Instead of becoming a best seller like Guy Kawasaki he feels he needs to put down the entire industry to prove his superiority.

There are good and bad accountants, lawyers, authors, sales trainers, digital agencies and Apple “experts” out there. Shankman points out the obvious: be a good marketer, be customer service orientated, don’t misspell stuff, don’t let an intern do your social media. But you do need to help your team effectively socialize… and many of the social media disaster stories we read about every week come from companies that went it alone and didn’t get mentorship or study bast practices that already exist.

Social media is just a tool, you do need a strategy, an understanding of your customer and yes it should be integrated into multiple departments and with the rest of your business, marketing and customer service strategy. (Integration was one of the parts of your assessment).

I do not have a lot of love or time for people giving bad, ill-informed advice and misleading people or as Guy calls it
“Enchanting Gullible People.” There are a lot of clueless experts out there selling useless crap. On the other hand people like Shankman who want to group everyone and everything into on pile and suggest they should be burned to death really helps no one.

The bottom line: marketing and sales success principles will prevail… but the platforms for engagement have changed and customer tolerance for pitching or in-authentic engagement has decreased. We are in a new era with new opportunities (and new risks).

Have a listen to today’s podcast rant and let me know what you think!