Who Calls Themselves A Guru ???

I’m not a big fan of Titles.

Or, of self-proclaimed experts, wizards or gurus.

Unless you are Royalty, or hold an Official Position in Government, you don’t get to give yourself a Title.

I have always believed that your work should speak for you.

So, I am seriously wondering at the number of Guru’s, Wizards and Experts popping up and popping off about Social Media.

I believe you do your work, and if someone else says good things about you… Great !!!

If you have to give yourself a Grand PooBah title to finesse or trick someone into giving you a job… then you are probably in the wrong line of work.

In Social Media, word of mouth spreads fast.  But perhaps not as fast as typing “Guru” in your bio.

Currently, I am trying to pick up the pieces for a client, after a guru has charged top dollar for a dog’s breakfast.

(Yup… small “g” guru… a Title, given to them by me.)

From the post times on the two Facebook pages he “designed”, it took a little over an hour, at the beginning of December, to copy posts straight off the client’s two webpages… another three weeks to make a requested change… (which he only accomplished on one of the two pages) and despite repeated requests and increasingly urgent demands, after six weeks, the client is still waiting for the guru to grant access via admin rights.

Meanwhile, my client has two EXTREMELY expensive, out of date copies of their websites, posted to Facebook, that six friends of the guru have “LIKED”, and no one else in the world knows about.

THAT is just about as good an example of bad value for money, as you can get.

My client went in, and with good faith asked “Can you help us ?” and got a “Yes” in reply.

The actual answer should have been… “Not really, but I can charge you a LOT of money, and leave you hanging while I flounder and flail, because I’m not sure what I’m doing… but a lot of people seem to be making money on this, and I want to get in on it !!!”

A lot of businesses are trying to get onto the bandwagon of Social Media, and that is wonderful.  It IS the future, and the time to embrace and protect your brand is right NOW.

However, I am stunned by the number of Twitter Experts with Egg Avitars and mis-spelled Bios… Facebook Whiz Kids who don’t know how to remove or tweak a graphic to make the WHOLE NAME appear… LinkedIn Guru’s who have no profile image or connections…

I’m not saying I’m an expert… I know I’m not.

I know some folks who are experts, and they don’t refer to themselves as experts or Guru or Grand PooBah…  They let their work, and their clients speak for them.

In the meantime, there are a lot of folks out there who don’t have references, who are taking advantage of the demand, and taking advantage of their client’s trust.

I don’t like self-proclaimed Titles, and, even more, I don’t like folks unable to fulfill their self-proclaimed Title.