Expertise at Being an Expert

You hear it all the time, “Why John, he’s an expert,” or “You can get expert advice from Acme Insect Control.” And what exactly does that mean?

According to Wikepedia, an expert is defined as, “someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technical skill, whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by their peers or the public in a specific well-distinguished domain.”

I think the key here is “accorded authority…by their peers” because I sure see this word used a lot in the first person, especially when it comes to marketing and social media.

For the life of me, I’m not sure how anyone can claim to be an “expert” in social media, when most everyone is still figuring out the best way to use it in advancing their marketing objectives. There’s some good ideas out there for measuring and applying analytic tools and we’re all pretty sure we should be doing if we’re not, but I don’t buy “social media expertise” since we’re still in the very early stages of the medium. I don’t think anyone has really had enough experience to call themselves “experts.”

What’s more, even an expert sharpshooter will miss the bull’s eye occasionally.

I have never claimed to be a marketing expert. I have years of experience working with many size companies across many industries as well as seeing how different marketing media can be used cooperatively to achieve sales goals, but I sure can’t say I’m an expert. Every client’s situation is unique, and therefore requires a different approach.

I think most very wise people will say that the more you do something, the more you study it, the more you experience with it, the more you realize how much you don’t know. Sure, you can demonstrate moments of expertise, but this world changes so quickly that it becomes extremely difficult to remain an expert.

What do you think? I’d love to know.

David

The CMO Outsource