There are a lot of people out there claiming to be experts in social media. If you’re looking for social media help, I would suggest that the term “expert” be a big, red, waving-madly-in-the-air-trying-to-get-your-attention flag.

Let’s change focus for a moment and consider the field of just plain ol’ marketing. How many years of experience would it take for you do consider someone to be a marketing expert for a senior role in a company? Is six months enough? How about a year? No?

You’d probably want someone with several years of experience to fill that senior role. So why is social media any different? Do you really want someone with six months of social media marketing experience to be the social face of the company? Or, for that matter, someone with NO social media marketing experience (which many companies propose when they just decide that someone in marketing or PR is now going to be the social media representative, even though they have no training.)

Social media marketing is such a new field. With only two or three years in its existence, it’s hard to say that anyone could be an expert. (In it’s current form. You could argue that “social media” is the next-gen of “new media,” which has been around for longer)

What do you think makes an expert?