I am going to take off my hat as the editor for CanadaOne for a moment to indulge in a rant near and dear to my heart.

A recent blog post that highlighted CanadaOne in an attack against someone we had interviewed has prompted me to write about something that has been bothering me for some time: the question of how small businesses can sort out who to trust when hiring a social media consultant.

The blog post that prompted this rant focused on a quip made by Scott Stratten during a video interview I did over 18 months ago*, and assailed Scott's credibility based on a statement he made about how a business could use Klout.com to evaluate the influence someone has on Twitter. Scott, who had over 80,000 Twitter followers at the time, was reflecting on the difference between just having followers and having actual influence over followers. At the time his comment was extremely relevant, as there was little awareness of measurement tools like Klout and it was not uncommon for people who barely used Twitter to promote themselves as "experts". On the whole, the interview is still highly relevant today.

The blog post attacking Scott is offensive, unwarranted and while I am not a lawyer, I suspect it may be libelous. I could reply in kind and dissect the flaws in the blogger's comments, or better yet just ignore the post and let it fade into obscurity. (You can read the blogger's rant here.)

Yet doing either of those things would detract from the very real, important questions the post has raised, questions that resonate with a situation I have been watching with some interest and frustration over the past year:

1) Do social media experts feel that attacks are the only way they can differentiate themselves to get business / attention?

2) How are small business owners to feel confident about budgeting for a social media consultant when faced with so much – pardon my language – bullshit flying around?

Finger pointing at "false prophets" misdirection that detracts from real questions

In the past two months alone I have seen countless attacks from social media experts against their peers, with businesses that want to start using (or improve their use of) social media left with the task of sorting out which, if any, of these self-proclaimed experts is the best person or company to hire.

Here are some of the kinds of things I have heard recently.

Exchange between a social media consultant and someone involved with booking social media seminars:

Self-proclaimed guru 1: "I am the only person who can do seminars on social media for your organization because I made real money for my own businesses before I started teaching."

Question from person this statement was made to: "Really? So you can you share an example of a business you have worked with or taught that is making real money using social media?"

Self-proclaimed guru 1: "No. I don't do that. I teach seminars and am the only person you can trust to teach social media seminars because I am the only…"

Email from a social media consultant:

Self-proclaimed social media guru 2: "If you want to select a qualified social media expert, you should ask how many books that person has written." (This person has published three books on social media with what seems to be an obscure, "independent" publisher…)

My comment: Really? Books? Are we actually @#$@# talking about books? In a world of social media where the underlying infrastructure and sites of influence seem to shift in 6-8 week cycles? (To be fair, I think books related to high level strategy can be useful, but should NOT the differentiator used to select a social media consultant, especially when that advice comes from a consultant who has a lot to gain from promoting that idea.)

Marketing materials from a social media consultant:

Self-proclaimed guru 3: "I am a "certified" social media expert".

My comment: Certified? By what? Or whom? And what does certification actually mean? In a rant about an international certification body that shut down, blogger Maddie Grant points out that certifications imply standards and you cannot have standards (nor should you) in a field that is changing so quickly.

Why are experts so focused on asserting why they are "better", rather than on what really matters?

Marketing 101 tells us that businesses need to have a unique selling proposition. I get that, in fact CanadaOne published our first article on this topic, Know your Unique Selling Proposition (USP), in July 1999.

There is a huge difference between promoting the benefits a company has to offer and tearing down the competition using misdirection and misinformation. I cannot say this strongly enough:

Basing a USP on fear, uncertainty and doubt ( FUD) rather than talking about the benefits the business or consultant brings to the table creates confusion that does a disservice to the businesses who are looking to hire a social media expert. ANYONE who wants to take money from businesses as a social media or marketing consultant should focus on questions based around their ability to help the company in the way it needs help. Instead of talking about why others aren't qualified, be ready to justify why you are using metrix that matter: real-world results.

For many that means generating real, tangible revenue, along with a realistic outline of what activities and costs are involved in achieving the result. (Revenue is primarily, although not always, the main driver. There are other ways to use social media in a business as well, but usually the revenue component comes first.)

The situation reminds me a lot of website projects in the 1990s that saw companies spend anywhere from $5000 to $10,000 for a website that would get them a "presence". Young adults sporting black t-shirts were "famous" for using FUD to convince businesses to spend money in ways that didn't make any sense, when viewed with 20-20 hindsight.

So where does that leave us? The words of the professor of a 4^th year exploration mining class I took in the 90's springs to mind.

The professor held out an ugly, small rock in front of the class and pronounced while shaking the rock meaningfully from side-to-side:

"A rock is just a bloody rock, until you pull it out of the ground and make $1 of profit from it. At that point it is no longer a just a rock, and becomes ore."

The platforms, the players and even the strategies may change. But if you are a business owner looking to hire a social media consultant what you really need to ask, to get away from the FUD that is far too common in this industry, is for demonstrable proof that the person or company will be able to help you mine "ore". If the person or company can't do that, you need to keep looking.

Also, let me be clear that I regularly teach business owners about how to use the Internet, and social media, for business through Chambers of Commerce and the Self-Employment Benefits (SEB) program offered at Centennial College. So yes, I earn money teaching people about the essential elements of social media. Teaching is something I've done going back as far as 1997 (although we didn't call the marketing side of the Internet social media at that time) and is something I have maintained because I feel that I need to help smaller companies understand and make the transition to start adopting technology effectively in their businesses.

I do not, however, offer social media consulting services unless it is part of a much larger web project done through CanadaOne's parent, Biz-Zone Internet Group Inc. Enough said.