April 19th, 2010 | 
Author: How long does it take to become known as an ‘expert’? Well, Google it and you can find countless articles, blog posts and books about how to become an expert. Funny thing is, no one can seem to agree on the definition of an expert. Even the word starts to look and sound strange when I type it so many times.
I read ‘Freakonomics’ a few months back and they had some interesting things to say about these so-called experts. Sure, they have tons of knowledge about their particular field, but look carefully and you’ll find two things fairly commonly: 1-They use their ‘informational advantage’ to serve their own interests and 2-They will fudge facts and numbers to give their point more impact knowing that most people will simply believe them. Now I’m not saying that you should never trust someone who calls themselves an expert, but a healthy dose of skepticism serves one well in this world.
My friends over at bluepint (despite their amusing refusal to capitalize anything) made an interesting point in a recent article about social media. Their topic was how to get a job in the social media field and their top advice was:
please don’t refer to yourself as a social media guru, ninja or rockstar
How easy it is to let the success of a few clients go to our heads, eh? It’s just not possible to be an expert in a field that is so young and changing day by day and minute by minute.
I have shied away from calling myself anything of the sort and have stuck with ‘consultant’. I believe that it encompasses what I do and how I approach it in a very broad sense. Each of my clients provides me with a new challenge and a new opportunity to learn something. It could be that I’m learning more about how media can be used for marketing or picking up a new software skill. I’m never afraid to tell a client, “I don’t know the answer to that, but I will certainly find out.”
Would you rather hire an expert who uses what he learned in the past or hire a consultant who will find the answers you need and put them to work for your brand? If I’m not learning, then I’m not doing my job.
Copyright © 2010 Jeanette DeHoff
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