If it seems too good to be true...

Yesterday I received a notification about a new posting from one of the groups I’m on on LinkedIn, and whilst it made me a bit angry it got me to thinking about some of the potential problems with the kind of chatroom or forum that shares ‘knowledge and expertise’.

Anyone who has read previous (and do doubt future) postings on this blog will know that I feel very strongly about a number of things within the world of social media. These include (but are not limited to):

• ROI
• Measurement
• Auto follow
• The importance (or lack) of followers

So, the post that enraged me was written by a couple of ‘internet marketing’ consultants. They were talking about how it’s easy to use a combination of Google Alerts, Twitter Feed and Social Oomph to win and keep new Twitter followers (at up to 1000 per week) and how valuable this is to a business’s marketing drive. And how once this is set-up it basically takes care of itself.

Clearly this isn’t true – as you will know from my other posts.

Unfortunately though, groups within LinkedIn are often populated by a combination of psudo-experts and people who are eager to learn – never a good combination and herein lies the fundamental risk with any croudsourced content. It may be wrong! I know that various studies purport to show that getting enough people together guarantees that the truth and facts will percolate to the top…if only it were that simple. The fact of the matter though is that it’s NOT true.

Read ‘the cult of the amateur’ by Andrew Keen for a very long and reasoned explanation as to why this isn’t true and why we are currently sitting on a knife edge where we fail to value expert opinion and we could drop in to the abyss of the lowest common average at any moment.

Whilst I’m sure that these ‘experts’ are well intentioned with what they say, the truth is that they are perpetuating myths that are both counterproductive and potentially damaging to the businesses that take them on. Yes, I acknowledge that anybody who takes advice without checking credentials is foolish, but we all get swayed by weight of opinion and this is a case in point.

So, this kind of misinformation gives social media consultants and indeed social media a bad name, therefore please take advice delivered on these ‘helpful’ forums with a pinch of salt. Remember…

If something seems too good to be true…it’s usually because it is!