Nathan Hangen

Abusing a Social Media Voice – My Take

So a few days ago I was reading a post by @dannybrown regarding @dougmeacham‘s interaction with Best Buy’s Chief Marketing Officer (@BestBuyCMO). You can read the original post that started it all here, or Danny’s reaction here. Now, the thing that struck me about both of these guy’s opinions, is that both of them took a very hard stance on either side of the line.

Doug saw a price discrepancy between a Best Buy item online and the same item in the store. The item in the store was 50 bucks more, which doesn’t surprise me because Best Buy seems to have issues with being congruent on the two fronts, but that isn’t the issue here (although it should have been). What ended up happening was that Doug got pissed and was able to get the Best Buy associate in the store to match the online price. Great right? Well…here’s where it gets hairy.

Getting the right price wasn’t enough for Doug, who then proceeded to go to Twitter and openly blast Best Buy’s CMO. Apparently, he was out for blood because if you read the interaction, it was more of a one way “show” where Doug tried to educate a freaking CMO about how to handle customers. Now, I give Doug the benefit of the doubt for having a gripe. I might have done the same thing, but once he actually got a reply, he started acting like an ass. This is a big no no and is why Danny decided to blast him for it.

The problem I have here is that there are too many “social media experts” trying to pose as God’s gift to new media. They think it is their duty to educate people that do this for a living. I’m sure Best Buy’s CMO didn’t get there yesterday, he knows a thing or two about marketing. Sure, he might not be the best social media expert, but he is on Twitter and he does pay attention to his feed. I’d say he’s at least slightly clued in.

Now what you have is a guy like Doug trying to put himself on a pedestal, talking and not listening, which in the end makes every one else in his niche look like a tool too. If I were to try and sell myself as a social media consultant to Best Buy’s CMO, he’s going to put me in the same category as Doug, and I’m going to have to dig myself out of a hole in order to do business.

This happens ALL THE TIME in the social media landscape, especially now that  Twitter allows any regular joe to pretend to be anything he wants to be. Suddenly everyone is a Twitter or social media expert. Really? Weren’t you living in your parent’s basement yesterday? Weren’t you living in cubicle nation taking spoon fed orders from a boss? Now all the sudden you have Twitter at your side and you can show everyone how it is done?

Look, I’m not one to talk. Yes, I do social media consulting, but I don’t call myself as the King or Queen. I let my clients do the talking for me. The same should be true of people like Doug.

He had a great point in his blog post, but he blew it when he acted like a child on Twitter. Danny had it close, but I think he missed the point that things are changing and not everything goes through the same channels it once did.

Use your connections to make things happen (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn), but don’t act like a child. I’ve said my peace…what do you think?

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