Social Media Consultants: Practitioners Vs Theorists, Specialists Vs Generalists, People Vs Tech

If you do a LinkedIn search of Social Media Consultant in the UK you’ll currently find 6111 in the search results

There are also Social Media Gurus, Social Media Experts, Social Media Marketers and various terms to describe what’s on offer

Some are so great they deserve the keys to the city. Some are so shockingly bad they deserve to be behind bars

What’s clear though is that from the 6111 people in the search results you’ll find 6 Types Of Social Media Consultants that influence how they operate on social media and the results they get

PRACTITIONER VS THEORIST
I can’t emphasise enough what a huge difference there is between a Social Media Practitioner and a Social Media Theorist

Think about it – you can’t drive on the roads without passing both a theory test and a practical.

And I don’t believe you can truly train or talk about Social Media convincingly unless you’re actually being a practitioner

Social Media Theorists are in huge numbers and often their twitter feeds are curated posts from Mashable and Social Media Examiner interspersed with posts about how successful their training courses are

Rarely will you hear about the results of their work, read case studies or see testimonials from happy clients

Social Media Practitioners are often able to talk about Social Media in real terms because they’re living and breathing social media and know the difference between theoretical social media and practical application of Social Media

Naturally you’ll hear about the results of their work, read case studies of work done with businesses you know and see plentiful testimonials from happy clients

At Altrincham HQ we’re proud to be Social Media Practitioners and run successful social media campaigns for clients 200+ hours a month

SPECIALIST VS GENERALIST
Some digital agencies do Social Media very well as they’ve head-hunted the best specialist talent in Social Media, SEO, Web Design and so on

But there are so many Generalists out there that have seen the rise of Social Media and offer the service as a “bolt on” to their web design service or PR agency

One of the things I set in stone in our inception is that Altrincham HQ are Social Media 1st and we will refer work to others companies that specialise in web design, SEO and PR rather than offer a “jack of all trades” service

Quite often we’re brought into a business after the PR Company has provided a social media “service” for a year with no results or a web design has set up their social media profiles, but the business then has no idea what to post

A Social Media specialist will get deep down into the intricacies of each platform, know the nuances of each and the importance of being native to each platform. They’ll also be able to spend the time looking at new rising platforms to see if it’s time well spent for clients or a passing fad

Remember just because digital involves a computer doesn’t mean it involves the same skill set – a plumber works in a house, but you wouldn’t ask a plumber to wire your electrics.

Specialists have close working relationships with other specialist – it means you’re getting the best of each team member as part of connected campaign

PEOPLE FOCUSED VS TECH FOCUSED
The clue in Social Media is the word Social and it’s something that all too often people leave out

The best Social Media Managers will be people focused rather than tech focused and go all in on the engagement and the human interaction

There’s an art to engagement and making people happy and to do that you really have to be understand what makes people tick, what brightens up someone’s day, what insights they’re looking for

In Social Media the tech is just what makes the interaction and 2 way communication possible

When we deliver Social Media training – the mechanics of Social media, aka how to use it, is just a part of what we cover. The core of what we cover is actually the application of social media in terms of the marketing message, engaging  with others and how to use it to communicate more effectively

WHO WOULD YOU RATHER WORK WITH?
A people focused Social Media specialist practitioner

or

A tech focused Social Media generalist theorist

Social Media Consultants come in many shape and forms

Make sure you choose the right one!!

WHAT NEXT?
At Altrincham HQ we specialise in growing businesses via effective Social Media Marketing