No doubt you’ve seen the various videos mocking the rise of the ‘social media guru’ (“I’m a social media expert, it says so on my business card, now give me your money Mr. advertiser etc etc.”) and if you haven’t, they’ve been around for ages so you should probably have your finger pressed a little harder on the pulse…
Such videos, whilst pretty funny the first time you watch them, do nothing for the social media industry and the wealth of real expertise it boasts. Nor do a fair few of the 15,740* people on Twitter claiming to be a social media expert, whilst at the same time frantically retweeting the wise words of others.
The woman in the video below, Lisa I believe her name is, whilst appearing to ‘go against the grain’, would be a perfect example… So I’ve learnt two things from this clip. Firstly, that occasionally when marketing people speak all I can hear is ‘blah blah blah blah’ and second, from the way she says the words ‘out’ and ’about’, she’s probably Canadian.
But anyway… The rise of social media has exposed some incredible minds and talent, unlike young Lisa above, and that’s what this blog – IABUK social – is all about.
The IAB Social Media Council (SMC), which I run, is a group of REAL experts – organisations and individuals who live and breathe social media, and practitioners that work in it every single day for big brands all the way through to SMEs. Some are founders and CEOs of their own agencies, others head up whole departments within more traditional outfits, and even the big boys such as MySpace, Microsoft and Habbo are represented. A full list of biogs and photos can be found here.
We’ve got a lot of plans for 2010, and we’ll be documenting all of them here, as well as providing our take on the industry at large and what the future holds for the medium. And for all those other real experts who aren’t a member of the IAB Social Media Council, you can comment and collaborate with us on here too – hey, you’re probably just friends we haven’t met yet!
On this blog you’ll find all our latest news, as well as details of the many (always educational, sometimes feisty) events we host throughout the year, opinion from each and every one of our SMC members and hopefully a shop window for all that’s great – and achievable – within social media. Due to my excessively excitable nature I’m incredibly looking forward to what we come up with on here and hope we can kick-start a whole load of valuable conversations. And to be honest I’m just a little gutted we didn’t do it sooner!
If you want to get in touch please do so here, or by emailing me.
*Please note, this figure was taken from a Mashable article about a month ago and has probably doubled in size since then.
