Yeah for me! It’s Tuesdays Untacked!!!

There’s been much chatter at ye old water cooler as of late. Well, actually, at HorseGirlTV we don’t have a water cooler so, uh, ahem… As of late, there’s been much chatter around the HorseGirlTV Nespresso Espresso Machine. Cappuccinos abound and our espresso laden team is buzzing with the biz of social media experts.

I have been involved in IT over a decade as part of the dotcom revolution in the early 2000s. You know back when companies were buying others solely on member base regardless of their massive burn rates? Anyway, I digress. Back to the task at hand – social media experts!

It was brought to my attention the plethora of business card carrying social media “experts” that have cropped up from the, one can dare say, American entrepreneurial spirit OR perhaps the highest unemployment rate in ages. Several of us at HorseGirlTV have even received the calling cards of social media experts touting the virtues of their services.

I guess the long and the short of this, what has become a rant for Tuesdays Untacked, is the hilarity of The Onion’s fall parody for social media experts. I do actually know several honest to goodness experts in the biz who have been part of the social community evolution from the days of WebRing’s Ringmasters to Classmates then Friendster to the designers nightmare of Myspace (no, no, no, not everyone should be allowed to design their own webpage) then onward and upward (upward of the IPO that is) to Facebook and finally saturating the mainstream, the microblogging of Twitter. But wait there’s more… the next big thing beyond Twitter’s 140 characters is 180 characters (stick around, it’ll happen and you’ll be Pinning about it). So back to my previous run on sentence. I do actually know several honest to goodness experts so they ARE out there and having followed trends (not just Twitter accounts) for nearly TWO decades many are in the know and an asset to our online experience. If you’re unsure how to make social media work for you, seek those people out, ask for credentials (real credentials not just a pretty biz card from VistaPrints) and if you can’t find one, read the history books about that crazy thing many said wouldn’t catch on, that pesky “Information Super Highway” AKA the. Internet and WWW with dotcoms plastered on every single movie trailer, bus graphic, and even coffee shop.

Ergo, what used to be exclusive to hip torn-jean, t-shirt wearing computer geeks, well, the ink on the societal tattoos of those early adopting hipsters has clearly saturated the suburbs thanks to those fabulous humans formerly known as Walmart greeter turned social media expert. No there’s NOT an App for that. Alas, that harkens me back to 1995 and trying to sell webpages to local companies who couldn’t fathom why they needed a mere “online brochure” but woe as me, they did! 😉 Sorry, more digression…

If you’re actually looking for an honest to goodness quality read without massive fluff, check out The Impact Equation: Are You Making Things Happen or Just Making Noise?. Chris makes some good points for small business and offers interesting stats or if you’re simply wondering why some people are insanely successful while other are mediocre, check out Malcom Gladwell’s The Outliers: The Story of Success as it’s a fantastic read and thanks to Felicitas von Neumann-Cosel for recommending it to me!

Zoinks! I’ve gone all over the map and back again. What can I say? I like to travel! So if you’re still with me go grab your morning cup of whatever you drink and click play below to enjoy the merriment of this, oh to cute, offering from the cheeky band at The Onion.