How to Recognize a Non-Expert

Craig Agranoff, in What Is a Social Media Expert (via @KevinOKeefe):

Evan Sneider, who does public relations for a Miami-based website, told me, “Usually, if someone says they’re an ‘expert’ at anything, they aren’t. Most ‘experts’ have no idea that they’re exceptionally good at whatever it is they’re doing.”

There are experts in social media—people for whom the media are not the end, people who actually use social media to help, educate, and entertain others (example: Wichita reporter Ron Sylvester, who works in Twitter, text, and video). They don’t claim to be experts. Claimed expertise in social media is a pretty good indicator that one is not an expert.

This is more true in the area of social media than in other disciplines. To those who have been soaking in social media, using it to make a difference rather than trying to sell their ability to use it, the phrase “social media expert” is a term of derision. The self-descriptive use of a term that is widely ridiculed in the area of supposed expertise is a pretty good indicator that the “expert” is ignorant of how social media really work.

It’s kind of like a “writer” with spelling errors in his CV, or a “therapist” who talks incessantly about herself, or a “spy” who brags about being a spy. It’s a dead giveaway.

Not everyone who doesn’t claim to be an expert in social media is one. Nobody who does is.

Born to Fail, But on Life Support

Kevin O’Keefe (Lexblog) and Scott Greenfield (Simple Justice) are having a discussion, prompted by Mark Herrmann’s (Drug and Device Law) observation that the ABA Journal’s list of the top 100 legal blogs contains only two blogs associated with biglaw firms, about whether and why biglaw blogs suck and whether social Darwinism will eventually eliminate those blogs that do suck.

Sometimes we know a law blog is doomed to fail. We know it because its title is keyword-rich, or because the titles of most of its posts are keyword-rich, or because it has calls to action at the bottom of posts (incidentally, I would argue that a call to action at the bottom of a blog post renders that post an advertisement, which in most states must be approved by the State Bar)—all signs that the author is looking for commercial return on his blogging investment. We know it because it refers to its author in the third person, or because the writing is stilted and lacking in passion.

We know it because it is boring.

A blog doesn’t have to be funny, but if it doesn’t either educate or entertain, it’s boring. The best legal blogs do both.

What is failure? It’s not having fewer readers than someone else—a blog may be a success with an audience of one. It’s not making less money than someone else—most blogs have no dream of making a buck. It’s not even getting linked to less than the next blog—while incoming links may be a metric of success, a blog may succeed without ever being cited.

Failure is stopping. Not writing any more. Giving up.

Failure is quitting.

Boring law bloggers will quit because it’s no fun being boring. And some nonboring law bloggers will quit because . . . well, because other things take higher priority.

So we see a boring law blog, and we don’t subscribe to it or blogroll it or link to it. And eventually the blogger will find that he’s talking to himself, shouting his boring commercial thoughts out into a vacuum. And eventually he’ll quit.

Many LexBlog blogs don’t suck (Vickie Pynchon, Jamie Spencer); maybe most LexBlog blogs don’t suck—there’s a huge well of writing talent in the legal community. But Kevin is selling blogs to lawyers as a marketing scheme—blog to get business—and some of Kevin’s customers wouldn’t be blogging if they didn’t think they could make a buck, so it’s not hard to find blogs in Kevin’s blogroll that do suck. Kevin says, “Most of our clients tell us their blogging is a lot of fun.” I’m willing to bet that there is a high inverse correlation between fun and suckiness.

Like a good kindergarten teacher, Kevin’s job is to encourage the slow kids and leave the smart kids alone. LexBlog props up its blogs with an in-house blogroll so that even those that suck get links from those blogs that don’t, and whose authors really should know better. So even those bloggers who are not having fun, and whose blogs therefore suck, get a little bit of traffic to keep them going.

I’m going to be the mean kindergarten teacher, and direct my comments to the law bloggers who don’t think blogging is a lot of fun: it’s not a lot of fun because your blog sucks. I’m sure there is something you’re good at, but it’s not blogging. You’re wasting your time. If you don’t enjoy writing it, nobody wants to read it.

Quit now.

The Spammer’s Lament

Here’s Chicago lawyer Alan Brinkmeier in response to my Defending People post calling him out for spamming Avvo Answers:

Anyway, even though you disagree that my free online participation is a positive thing, isn’t it a lot more civil to have a dialogue such as this as opposed to your name calling blog [avvo-answhores.html]. One of the things I teach in ethics and professional responsibility to young lawyers is that civility assists lawyers to make a point more rationally, peacefully, and powerfully than name calling.

And here’s Bennett Michaels (Brilliant Business Borrowing! Adoptions! Suspension Lift Kits! Rifle Scopes! Spam Spammity Spam!), on Popehat in response to the calling-out of Seattle Lawyer Spammer Bradley Johnson:

Patrick you are a real a-hole. Why not grow up a little and just not approve the comment like the rest of the world?

Why, when they discover spam, don’t blogs like (list via Eric Turkewitz):

• Eric Turkewitz’s New York Personal Injury Law Blog;
• Scott Greenfield’s Simple Justice;
• Popehat;
• Ronald Miller’s Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog (re: Denver Motorcycle Lawyer Comment—Scott Sullivan);
• Mike’s Crime and Federalism (re: Bradley Johnson, Seattle Spam Lawyer);
• South Florida Lawyers (Let’s Meet Jason Diamond, Ticket Attorney!); and
• Roy Mura’s Coverage Counsel (Outing Blog Content Spammers, Starting with All States Public Adjusters)

just send a quiet email to the spammers? Wouldn’t that be much more . . . civil? In other words, “Why can’t we just have a quiet little talk about this, ending in me promising never to do it again, instead of you outing me and my clients as spammers to the whole world?”

It’s a fair question. The answer: If the problem were simply one lawyer causing one blog to be spammed, then a quiet little talk would probably suffice, but it’s not all about you, Alan Brinkmeier, or Bradley Johnson, or Jason Diamond, or Scott Sullivan, or All States Public Adjusters.

Nobody ever spams just once. When Scott Sullivan’s agent spammed Ronald Miller’s Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, he also spammed honolulu.injuryboard.com, washingtoninjuryattorneyblog.com, michiganautolaw.com, and probably many others. That’s the point of spam—trying to make worthless or unwanted content valuable by distributing it widely. If Ronald had had a quiet word with Scott Sullivan about his comment spam (which doesn’t work, by the way), it would have stopped the comment spam to Ronald’s blog. But it wouldn’t have kept that particular spammer from spamming everyone else. Bradley Johnson is a case in point: even after promising to stop leaving comment spam, he continued.

It also wouldn’t have made an impression on any other potential spammer. But calling these spammers out publicly might not only get them to change their ways, but also discourage other people from following in their path. A reaslawyer, reading about Scott Sullivan and Bradley Johnson, and Jason Diamond, would be extra-careful who he hires to do his marketing for him (outsource your marketing, outsource your reputation).

Why does that matter? I can’t speak for Turkewitz, Greenfield, Hat, Miller, Mike, SFL, and Mura, but for me it’s mostly a matter of aesthetics. I don’t see the internet as a place to turn a quick buck—a flea market—but as a place to educate and entertain, and to be educated and entertained. Spammers and marketers and everyone else trying to make a quick buck clutter up the internet with their bullshit, obscuring the work of those who actually apply talent and effort to educate and entertain.

It is also a matter (though this is secondary to me) of ethics. The Bradley Johnsons, Jason Diamonds, and Scott Sullivans of the world are trying to commercialize the creative work of others. Rather than try to earn attention by producing interesting and informative content (which they may well be incapable of, as are most people), they are trying to coopt a little of the authority that others have earned.

Even if I don’t write for money, I can fairly object to others trying to make money off my writing. While there is no law on the internet, that doesn’t mean there can be no order. And if those bloggers with some authority (by dint of their readership, which comes because of their talent) want to step up and impose order on their little corner of the internet, then order there will be.

Don’t Be Bradley Johnson

Even a social media tyro like me knows: if you get caught spamming blogs (like Seattle lawyer Bradley Johnson did) and you apologize and promise never to do it again (like Bradley Johnson did) . . .

Don’t do it again (like—you guessed it—Bradley Johnson did).

Do as I Say, Not as I Do?

Miami criminal defense lawyer Brian Tannebaum has some questions for self-proclaimed social media expert Adrian Dayton. Brian latches on to some inconsistencies between the things that Adrian says about himself on his website and the record elsewhere on the internet, as well as inconsistencies between the things that Adrian says about himself on his website and what Brian sees as reality:

How can a member of the Bar, with a straight face describe themselves as a rainmaker and an “experienced corporate attorney” with 8 months experience, 2 of which there was no work? And in those first 8 months was he an integral part of one $450 million dollar merger, or was it several $450 million dollar mergers? Which bio is true? Exactly what role did he play and what relevance does it have to teaching lawyers to use twitter? Was he using twitter before the merger? Did twitter get him the merger client? Someone, anyone?

I describe Adrian as a self-proclaimed social media expert, but is there any other sort? Michigan law student Justinian Lane suggests applying the Daubert test to social-media “experts”:

If people are going to not only sell themselves as experts, but try and sell themselves as experts to lawyers, isn’t it fair to expect them to undergo the same scrutiny you’d subject an expert to in a lawsuit?  I know that many of you are probably a little intimidated about social media and technology in general.  So I’ll tell you what: If you’ve got a question or two about social media, shoot me an email.  I am not an expert!  But I’ve been blogging since 2003 and I probably know enough to prevent you from wasting money on someone who hopes to exploit your ignorance.

Justinian lists eight generally-accepted principles of social media (“If any expert disagrees with these principles, he not only would fail Daubert, but fails at the Internet”). The inconsistencies Brian finds in Adrian’s online persona suggest that Adrian doesn’t subscribe to the first of those principles:

Be honest about yourself and your experience.

If someone selling social-media marketing can’t tell his own story truthfully and coherently, why would you pay him to tell yours?

The Twitter Interesting Index

Twitter Interesting Index Calculator v1. “More followers = better” is a delusion. In truth, more interesting = better.

Look for v2, coming soon.

What Part of “Social” is Unclear?

Are you the kind of guy who hands out business cards in church? Who, dining out at a restaurant, goes from table to table selling bowling balls? Who, when meeting friends for drinks, tries to get them to join your MLM scheme?

If so, then social media marketing is for you!

If not, however—if, that is to say, you are not a huge asshat with boundary issues and an underdeveloped sense of self, or at least don’t want to seem to be such—then please resist trying to use Twitter, Facebook, and blog comments to hawk your wares.

Now, I know that you’ll get lots of Twitter “followers” and Facebook “friends” even if you’re in perpetual sales mode. Getting followers is not hard; I know of at least one Twitter account with no updates and more than 1500 followers. But guess what? Those followers will be in perpetual sales mode too.

You’re all yammering at each other, and nobody is listening.

Many of us like to use social media socially, to meet other people for pleasure, to form educational and entertaining connections with other human beings.

Trying to sell to us using social media is like trying to teach a warthog to sing (just like a pig, but uglier and with long dangerous tusks).

A Sort of Denial from Glenn Beck . . . Sorta

Glenn Beck’s lawyer has at last officially denied that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990, but the denial is buried in paragraph 35 of a complaint filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization Arbitration and Mediation Center, linked to at the Legal Satyricon.

This is all well and good, but it raises the question: why won’t Glenn Beck personally deny allegations that he raped and murdered a girl in 1990? Why is he hiding behind his lawyers?

Twitter Curmudgeon Tools

Find two twitterers’ common followers.

Eliminate your followers who haven’t twitted in n days (or who have never twitted, or whose twits are protected).

Eliminate your followers who care so little about content that they follow a selected spamoron or spambot.

The Twitter Follower Delusion

On Twitter, followers are like money you can’t spend. They are like money because they have zero intrinsic value, and are only worth something because some people agree they are worth something. But of course you can’t trade your Twitter followers to someone else who agrees with you that they have value.

“No intrinsic value”??? But every person that sees my content is valuable!

First of all, no. If you’re writing in Hindi, or on a college level, and the person that sees your content reads no Hindi, and on a fifth-grade reading level, the fact that your content passes beneath his gaze means nothing.

Second, you’re assuming that “followers” on Twitter actually see anything you write.

Guy Kawasaki is “following” 163,812 people. If he spent one second per twit and each of his followeds twitted once per day, it would take him 45 hours to review a day’s twits. I think we can safely say that Kawasaki doesn’t read 99% of his “friends’” twits; as a follower, Kawasaki has no intrinsic value.

Maybe, but Kawasaki is an aberration. Most people don’t follow that many.

Do you suppose that anyone “following” a thousand people is actually reading his “friends’” twits? I suspect not.

I recently built an application that allowed me to select a twitterer, and automatically force all of that twitterer’s followers to unfollow me. I selected a few twitterers of the “picture of Britney giving a blowjob” variety, and ran the application on them.

I promptly lost a third of my paltry 700 followers. That means that 200 people following me were also following spammers who contributed nothing.

That they were following the spammers revealed to me that they didn’t care about what their “friends” (Twitterspeak for those they are “following”) were saying.

So why were they following me? Probably in hopes that I would boost their follower number by following them back. And there’s the heart of the matter: many on Twitter don’t decide whom to follow based on the interestingness of their content, but only in hopes of boosting their own follower numbers; these are followers without value.  Or, as @KevinOKeefe says, “just because someone has a lot of followers on Twitter does not mean they are offering anything of value“.

Guy Kawasaki apparently can’t conceive of more followers as anything but better:

I check on my TwitterCounter stats so many times a day that it scares me. I don’t think it’s just me that does this because there are only two kinds of Twitter users: those that want more followers and those that are lying.

It’s a game; I get that. But Twitter followers—like World of Warcraft gold or Monopoly money or U.S. greenbacks—aren’t worth anything to people who aren’t playing the game. The Twitter Delusion is that they are.

I love games, and sometimes wish I could afford to play them more. But playing games has costs, whether direct costs or opportunity costs. If the game depended on merit, so that the price of more Twitter followers were to produce more interesting relevant conduct, I might give it a shot—producing interesting relevant conduct requires thought and creativity, two faculties that I could afford to exercise more.

But if the cost of having another follower is to give my imprimatur to someone whom I am not interested in following, I’m not going to play.

Why care? If you have 700 followers, and 250 of them are never going to pay attention to a word you write, why does it matter? You should just be grateful for those who will pay attention and not try to change things.

It probably doesn’t, and I probably should.

But imagine a Twitter (or a subTwittersphere) in which people only follow each other if they might be interested in what they had to say. The spammers go away (or spend all of their time twitting each other), and the rest of us can more easily find a community of shared interest without having to weedwhack our way through the “Trump Network” and “TweetAddder” spambots and spamorons.

Ah, the potential!