
Gary Vaynerchuk: “99.5 Percent Of Social Media Experts Are Clowns” (TCTV) - hanszeir
http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/13/gary-vaynerchuk-social-media-clowns-tctv/
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jaysonelliot
Of course Vaynerchuk would say that - he's got his own "Social Media Expert"
consulting business. <http://vaynermedia.com/>

"Social media experts are mostly clowns! Except me. You can trust me."

~~~
charlesju
<http://twitter.com/#!/garyvee>

Nothing else, he has 850k followers on Twitter. Mostly organic. I think it is
safe to say, 99.5% of "Social Media Experts" do not have 500k+ followers.

~~~
jaysonelliot
How do you arrive at the conclusion that his follower list is "mostly
organic?"

It's true that having over 500k followers puts you in the top 700 Twitter
users.

It's equally true that having over 500k followers does not automatically make
someone a "social media expert" (Donald Trump, Lindsay Lohan, & Nicole Richie
are in that list - I don't think I'd hire them for social media strategy).

Is it also true that you can't be a social media expert with <500k followers?
I don't know the answer to that one, probably not.

It's definitely true that Gary V's follower count alone does not confer expert
status, nor deny it from anyone else.

~~~
garyvee
my follow count has no merit,the most I have is that I help build a 60 million
dollar a year business ect.. again I didn't want to come at this from a bad
place, I was trying to start a conversation that should be had

~~~
jaysonelliot
Well put.

------
pstack
Every moron with a social networking account and a college degree markets
themselves as a "social media expert" and I take anyone with that label about
as seriously as I do anyone who calls themselves a "Tech Crunch journalist"
(except, of course, at least Tech Crunch doesn't pretend to be journalism).

~~~
brudgers
The classic summary [NSFW]:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKCdexz5RQ8>

------
rudiger
I play it safe. My strategy with Social Media Experts™ is to round up and
assume that 100% of them are clowns.

~~~
phlux
STOP INSULTING CLOWNS!

------
TravisLS
This post has kind of a linkbait title, given that the actual content is
pretty insightful. The 99.5% comment is really referring to the social media
experts missing the bigger point.

tl;dr social media isn't just a tactic to dabble in, because it opens the
floodgates for end user communication. It's potentially a revolutionary way to
establish context with users, but you have to be ready to engage fully or it
can do more harm than good.

~~~
sbierwagen
That last sentence was some kind of amazingly subtle, spot on, parody, right?
This is a troll, right, this is you, trolling me?

You didn't just seriously use the phrase "a revolutionary way to establish
context with users", unironically. Right?

~~~
nametoremember
I don't think there was any need for that tone or the three questions. There
is a local Chinese takeaway near me. Walking distant. Before, the only way
they could communicate with me is through leaflets in the door. Now I can see
their updates in my newsfeed. This _is_ revolutionary.

Just because people abuse a phrase doesn't mean it is not relevant.

~~~
sbierwagen
For a horrifying, timeless moment, I thought you were serious. I thought you
were some kind of Paul Carr-level social media twat, and that you genuinely
thought that a Chinese restaurant spamming you via facebook rather than via
paper was a legitimate advance in technology.

Then I looked at your other comments, and realized that I had just been
trolled so hard that it had more in common with a religious experience than
ordinary, mortal satire. My vision went gray. I saw angels beckoning me to a
bright white place. There was harp music, reasonably priced German beer, etc
etc.

You are really amazingly good at this. If someone isn't already paying you to
dick with people on the internet, they should be.

~~~
nametoremember
Ok I will play.

Firstly, to get this out of the way, your attitude doesn't really belong on HN
and these petty arguments don't contribute to the discussion.

Let's look at how I believe it is revolutionary for the Chinese restaurant.

* They now have an easier, more convenient and better way to contact and be in constant contact with their customers.

* They have pretty good data on their customers. Their ages, their genders, their education status and more.

* Easier transition to online business. If they decided to provide an online service they already have an attentive customer base to work from.

For what it is worth, I do think most "social media experts" are full of
waffle.

~~~
mquander
I think the source of the disagreement here is that you use the word
"revolutionary" to mean "easier, more convenient."

------
raganwald
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeons_Law>

------
andrewhillman
A "social media expert" is just another way of saying "I am on unemployment
and trying to ride figure shit out before someone catches on."

------
rmason
See an awful lot of new college graduates hanging out the social media expert
shingle. They don't understand business or the concept of ROI. I've only met
one that that got it and has since built a sizeable business because she gets
verifiable results.

I've referred two business friends to Gary's latest book because it has easily
understood recipes of how a business such a restaurant can make social media
work for them. They're actual case studies, no theory and the majority of the
examples aren't even Vayner Media clients.

A good consultant needs to be a great marketer first and social media expert
second.

------
hugh3
Ah yes, but what fraction of clowns are social media experts?

~~~
klochner

      p(e|c) = p(c|e)*p(e)/p(c)
             = .995*p(e)/p(c)
             ~ .3/.75
             = .4

~~~
yequalsx
How do you know what values p(e) and p(c) are?

~~~
klochner
You've just learned the dirty secret of financial modeling - it's a lot of
math and statistics built on top of on possibly arbitrary guesses of prior
probabilities.

~~~
hugh3
Fun fact: the average VW Beetle contains twelve social media experts.

------
fbailey
Here's the story of a so called social media expert: My story. I've been
working at various online projects, startups and agencies since 1998 (or 1999
I'm not sure). For the last 8 years I've mostly done consulting in the UX area
and some related strategic areas (product development, focus, features...).
More and more communities came to me with questions about their features ,
their UX issues and how to build communities. Since UX social design is pretty
interesting, I was happy with that, but then something changed. In the last
years more and more brands came to me and asked for social media advice, at
first I resisted. I gave them advice, but I didn't see it as a strategic
opportunity, by then we had grown to a small consultancy and I saw no moat or
specific knowledge we could use.

Because ... well after all Social Media is easy isn't it? It's just using
Facebook and Twitter and nearly everybody can do it. I'm a hacker (a
nontechnical hacker who knows what lisp is and how to get a database to scale)
i thought marketing is stupid, I want to work on cool stuff.

But something happened in the last 2 years, I analyzed how the behaviour of
users changed. I helped building brands on social media. I saw the
difficulties of people that had active and succesful twitter accounts in
developing a succesful strategy for a a company.

I now see Social Media Consulting as a central part of our business and we
have a moat, it's knowledge. Managing a Facebook Account with 1.000.000 likes
is not easy and it has nothing to do with using Facebook as a personal tool.
The term social media ist still stupid but I no longer have a problem calling
myself a social media expert. Expertise is a relative term even a local Social
Media expert with 800 followers might be perfect for his clients. Using social
platforms for strategic communication purposes is not easy.

------
michaelcampbell
And 100% of those, reading this, will assume they're in the 5%.

~~~
kenjackson
It's 99.5%, not 95%. Fortunately I'm in that .5%.

~~~
MartinCron
So am I! What are the odds of that?

~~~
rorrr
0.25%

~~~
johnsonman
You mean 0.0025%.

~~~
rorrr
Yes, I fail at simple math.

~~~
reinhardt
You must be a social media expert too, I reckon.

------
michaelpinto
Social media reminds me of SEO — both had an initial boom with tons of snake
oil hucksters. But I think both fields have matured for the most part and the
dust has settled. If someone tries selling social media or SEO as a full
fledged marketing program that's a mistake, but if it's part of something
larger that makes sense. The clowns are the ones who sell those services as a
cure all, the serious folks are those who sell the service as a measurable
value add.

------
brown9-2
99% of anyone that markets themselves as an "expert" in anything are clowns.

------
ivankirigin
I feel like I know a lot about social media, but I wouldn't call myself a
Social Media Expert. I think there is a strong correlation with applying that
label for yourself and being ineffective.

I also think value is relative. 90%+ of social media experts can probably make
a local mechanic have a better online presence.

------
awolf
I really love watching how people's tone change after posting a negative
comment here and getting a personal response from Gary himself. The is exactly
what Gary talks about doing in his books - glad to see it's effective when put
into action.

~~~
jsavimbi
He's done it to me a couple of times, but I'll get to that wino in the end. At
least he practices some of what he preaches and even though I see little value
in his past activities, aside from self-promotion, he's persistent enough to
remain relevant to the conversation as long as you don't lose sight of the
fact that he's a consultant selling you his opinion.

~~~
garyvee
LOL I love "ill get him in the end" U know I think we agree on a lot based on
your comments Jsavimbi I hope we can meet and break bread

------
uurayan
This is so true, especially in areas outside of the hot tech scenes. Social
media is such a buzz word these days you have people coming out of the wood
work to cash in on it. These "experts" take advantage of the more traditional
companies who are looking to develop a social media strategy simply for the
fact they they alway hear about it on traditional media. Most of these
"experts" have no social proof or reason to be called experts, they just lable
themselves. You can say the businesses hiring these people are to blame, but
when you know absolutely nothing on a subject how do you even know if you're
teacher is bad?

~~~
dhume
_when you know absolutely nothing on a subject how do you even know if you're
teacher is bad?_

Not that this is a complete solution, but I would expect a company getting
into social media to have some goals it would like to accomplish in doing so,
and it can evaluate a candidate based on past history of accomplishing similar
goals. Or maybe having such goals counts as knowing something?

------
emp_
Aw, I love experts. They keep us in the right path with marketing campaigns,
stock predictions, doomsday visions. They are just something, aren't they?

------
T_S_
That's because many clowns are, in fact, social media experts. Sheen, Trump,
Lohan etc.

------
garyvee
I thought I needed to expand on my "social media clowns comment on Tech
Crunch" here it is -> <http://bit.ly/kijXTI> \- also gave a big shout out to
this communtiy!

------
scrame
Only 99.5%?

------
lichichen
Before we get into a big discussion between expert/guru (I do find these names
silly, I especially hate the title Guru). How do you define social media
expert.

------
michaelchisari
That's definitely been my experience. Even some of the more credentialed
"experts" (not naming names) have a considerably shallow understanding of
social networking, especially the potential political, social and economic
implications.

------
swah
Just get off the bitch train and pick one.

------
jsavimbi
If you look at it from the point that anyone who uses a social network, by
virtue of ease of use is an expert, and only 5% of social network activity is
effective for whatever purpose, then yes, Gary would be correct.

Unfortunately, I believe that the effective level is a lot lower than 5%, so
Gary may be off somewhat in his clown assessment.

------
stuartmemo
99.5 percent of Gary Vaynerchuk is a clown.

~~~
Steko
Today we are all social media experts.

~~~
jleader
In the future, everyone will be a social media expert for 15 minutes.

~~~
MartinCron
I believe that the social media permutation is, "In the future, everyone will
be famous for 15 people"

