The Blog of Lisa Morosky

I assume you’re an expert in your field. Even if you don’t feel like you’re an expert, you are because you’re putting yourself out there on your blog and people are looking to you for information.

But there’s one difference between you and other experts: you’re giving away all your knowledge and resources for free. Something isn’t right here.

Don’t get me wrong. Free information is great, and it’s a huge part of being successful as a blogger.

But how many people that you classify to be “experts”, are giving everything away for free?

Think hard. Did you come up with anyone? Yeah, me either.

Just like any other expert in the world, you deserve to be paid for your unique knowledge, and your effort and expertise.

There’s no need to be scared about this transition, or under-value yourself. If your audience truly knows, likes, and trusts you, then they won’t care about having to spend a couple bucks on a product that you would have previously made free. In fact, they will already know how awesome your free content is, so they’ll probably think that this paid content will be much better and worth it (which it should be).

People are coming around to the idea of paying for information. Your audience won’t forsake you.

The bottomline is to not be afraid of this transition. You’re entitled to do this. This is one time when I think it’s accurate to say that it’s not personal, it’s business.

There’s something weird happening in the social media realm. Some people who participate in social media are marketing themselves as social media experts, based on the fact that they “know how to do social media”.

I think this is a classic case of “monkey see, monkey do”. You see how something is done, therefore you think you can do it too (and just as well). In the same respects, just because you have the knowledge on and know how to do something, doesn’t mean you can actually do it. I mentally understand how to drive a stick shift, but I can’t actually do it. I know how to take my vitamins, but I can’t seem to actually do it.

It doesn’t work like that with social media. It doesn’t take much brain power to send a tweet, or submit a site to Digg, or post a blog post. We all “know how” to do these things. But what makes a social media expert an expert is that they know why we do these things. They can explain why one medium should be chosen over another. They can create a strategy with many different elements that, when combined, give you the results you’re looking for. Social media experts are all about the “big idea”, and how these tools can get you from A to B.

With that said, I’ve had three really frustrating conversations over the past week. Three separate people (none of which I know personally), all who identify themselves as social media experts and contacted me through VAforBloggers.com, came to me with what I considered to be elementary questions (considering their “expert” status). One person was wondering if they should suggest being on Facebook to their client. Another person asked me how often their client should post on his or her blog. The last person asked me if I thought Twitter “worked”.

These are good, valid questions…if they’re coming from someone who isn’t a self-proclaimed social media expert.

The problem here is that these are people who participate in social media and have achieved some kind of success, therefore they assume that they can create strategies for others. It just doesn’t work that way. Just because you participate in something, it doesn’t translate to you being an expert on the topic.

Here’s my advice: quit defining yourself as a social media expert simply because you participate in social media and know a thing or two about a thing or two. Expertise should be defined by your audience/customers anyways.

Note: I’m not calling myself a social media expert. As is mentioned on my About page: “I am never going to refer to myself as an ‘expert’. I say this for two reasons. First of all, the word “expert” means a lot more coming from others. Secondly, the moment I tell you I’m an expert is the moment I’m telling you that I’ve officially learned all I need to learn. And I don’t see that ever happening.”