Jeremy Bryant

Everybody seems to be a “social media guru” these days. Like a real world sausage-fest, the “guru-fest” on Twitter and Facebook where four out of every five members claim to be some sort of ninja, jedi, maven, strategist or expert cannot possibly be a good thing. I exaggerate but echo chambers are not productive. What’s an earnest social media consultant to do?

Before you read on, you should know that I wrote this post only for those folks who are totally committed to the social media “industry” and intend to make a difference and long term careers out of this.

The Service Industry Cycle

Great, you’re in a service industry. This happens to every service opportunity. Something new and exciting happens and a few people move quickly to capture the opportunity. Others see money being made, mistakenly think it’s easy money, and then flood the scene.

We’ve reached that tipping point. We now have too many social media gurus.

How did we get here? The lowest barriers of entry ever before seen in history – except maybe for the world’s oldest profession. Anyone can build a website for little money and tell the world he is now a “social media guru” who will show clients how to navigate social networks. Even more absurd, he can go on a social network like Twitter, set up for free, and tell other members of the social network of his expertise. That’s like going to a hospital and having a fellow patient tell you he can cure your ills.

Plus there isn’t some lazy way to verify the quality of a guru like we have for accountants with CPAs, financial analysts with CFAs, or even clever business people with MBAs.

The Sameness of Promises Problem

If you want to be a successful social media consultant, you need to understand the Sameness of Promises problem. Every social media consultant promises the same thing - increased traffic and eyeballs, more buzz (whatever that means), higher search engine rankings, more followers, etc. By merely promising great results, there is no way to differentiate yourself and stand out from the guru crowd.

Now is the time to grow. To do this, you need to do something drastic, something different.

The Consultant as Curator

Fire your clients. Not all your clients, just your bottom 20% clients. Yes you do need to prioritize your client list. You need to be prepared to do this once a year. Your client list probably conforms to the 80-20 Rule: the top 20% of your clients is responsible for 80% of your revenue or profits. Your bottom 20% clients probably account for less than 5% of your revenue or profits.  You might actually be losing money servicing them.

Why fire your clients? When the promises you make are the same promises every other social media consultant makes, prospective clients have little to judge you on. Your client list is one of the few things competing consultants cannot copy. The quality of your client roster will signal to prospective clients if you’re truly a guru. Think of yourself as a curator of a gallery or museum. You’ve got to constantly clear space for bigger and better projects.

Bottom Line

None of this matters if you cannot execute and deliver on those cookie-cutter promises. But I’m assuming you’ve got the chops. I’m also assuming you want to grow and succeed in this business. You have a finite amount of time in a day. In order to get better clients, you have to free up time by firing low priority clients. I’ll leave you to define low priority. Maybe the readers of this blog can help. What are some ways you define low priority? What would make a client less important going forward?