13 Apr In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King

Guru. Ninja. Expert. They’re all the kings of their own social domain. I stumbled across another one the other day; an almighty, self-proclaimed “Twitter expert” who goes by the name of @[username withheld] and who introduced himself to a new client as the man who could make them a gazillion dollars from the Twitter without so much as breaking a sweat. They fell for it. Oh, the shame of it all…

This particular Social Media Overlord has over 3700 followers. That’s more than me, so fair play. Although on closer inspection his follower/following numbers are remarkably similar; but far be it from to whisper the words ‘auto follow’ in this giant’s presence. Oh, and he has a Klout score of only 36 and a lowly PeerIndex score of just 17. Which isn’t very guru-like, is it? Oh yeah, and before I forget, his last 25 tweets consist of 20 broadcast tweets, 1 retweet and 4 @messages, two of which are to Chris Moyles. Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear.

Then there’s this, brought to my attention by Rebecca Hollis: a training course entitled ‘Become a Social Media Expert in 1 Day’. Woah! A training school for gurus, ninjas and experts!

Did I read that right? Learn everything there is to know about social media in just five hours once you’ve taken out lunch? That’s frickin’ AWESOME! It says that they will train us “to utilize the new media marketing tools of blogs, online videos, photos, social networks and other social media related websites in online marketing, customer relations and PR efforts.” All of that in just FIVE HOURS! They must have some Matrix-style equipment that downloads data direct into the brain. And it’s only £110. That’s a frickin’ bargain! Isn’t it?

Unfortunately, the land of the blind is a very big country. And that means the one-eyed man, no matter how dubious, self-interested and deceptive, is very powerful.

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