I re-edited this John Wall jumper photo with Snapseed, one of my favorite social tools for photo sharing.
People frequently ask my opinion about social networks and applications. While I oblige requests individually, generally I don’t proactively seek to give advice or blog about tools unless the discussion revolves around a macro trend or impacts strategy.
It comes down to positioning, long term viability and personal interest.
When social media broke, I made the mistake of over-commenting on every little wrinkle and development. As a result, I was often labelled as a social media expert.
Let’s side step the whole expert thing (cough), and focus on cause and effect. When someone talks about tools all the time, people assume that individual has professional/personal expertise. In this case, consistently discussing social tools gives someone the appearance of subject specific knowledge.
That became an issue for my business as time progressed.
While I offer strategy services that extended well beyond social, most of my opportunities became social media specific. In 2009, I intentionally shifted content and stopped focusing on social specific topics.
Another shot, re-edited with Instagram.
The outcome worked. Today, perhaps 25-30% of my actual consulting work focuses on social media marketing with a larger portion on marketing, public relations and business development strategies.
Long term, I think this makes better sense, too. Specializing in social limits ones career path. There is little differentiation to be had in this segment, in my opinion. Social media blogs are a dime a dozen these days. And jobs are expected to dwindle as adoption wanes.
In addition to the actual work, blogging about social media became tiresome. How many times can you blog about Facebook or Twitter over the years?
So I stopped. When I resumed to write Welcome to the Fifth Estate in 2010, I soon tired again.
Social stopped serving as a creative muse. It was time to move on…
My exceptions to this rule are when a macro trend is present (such as IFTTT and automation), or I am helping a friend out with their book or the like (and it’s quality information). These add value to my editorial strategy, and contribute to the larger community.
What’s your take on social media blogging?