Medios Marketing Blog

If gold were plentiful it would be worthless. These days experts on every topic imaginable are plentiful.

The problem is that these experts contradict each other. It makes it difficult to gain insight into the issue in which you seek the expert advice in the first place. It also makes it obvious that the expert is dispensing advice not in pursuit of the truth or knowledge but rather in pursuit of their own agenda.

Take global warming. We follow the debate quite closely because we have a client to whom it is relevant. On the one side we have the humans-are-burning-too-much-carbon-and-causing-a-greenhouse-effect camp and on the other side you have the its-all-part-of-the-earth’s-natural-cycle-and-anyway-volcanoes-do-more-damage camp.

Both point to the other camp’s motives for optimising their findings. Finger-pointing and the reasons for adapting the results or doing the type of research that will give the results they seek is not relevant to this blog. Suffice it to say that neither side is untarnished.

At least there are still some barriers to entry for scientists. They need some academic credentials. Not so for social media, marketing, business, human nature, relationship, pet psychology and a host of other experts. For many of them the barrier to entry is setting up a blog and a Twitter account. I promote myself as an expert. All I have to back up my claim is four years of study and 15 hard years in the trenches, some awesome mentors and a few clients who have benefitted from my advice.

We live in the reality TV version of experts. People are famous for being famous. Similarly we have experts who are experts on being experts. The bar for entertainment is so low that we will people clean other people’s houses. Similarly, the bar for expert advice is low. We are taking advice from anybody that can critique the status quo in a harsh enough voice and generalise the problems of one industry so it sounds like a global business catastrophe.

Many of the experts I see giving business advice on how social media will double your business have not been in business long enough to know the true meaning of a customer’s need.

So where to from here? The fact is that we do need experts. The level of specialisation required to function dictates that we cannot be expert at everything. We need input from people who have more experience in fields that we are less familiar with.

To me the only way to get reliable advice is to get it from many sources, understand the basis of the advice and to measure it based on the experience of others who have used the same resource. Fortunately the web and social media means that everybody can be compared, measured, reviewed and analysed. The disadvantage is that there are so many different points-of-view that it can be hard to tell who is right and who is wrong.

As always the solution is customised. Here is a four-step plan to choosing your expert.

Step one: Choose an expert whose advice relates to problems you personally experience. The expert’s advice and experience must mirror your needs. I run a smaller business. For me to take Tom Peters’ advice as gospel is useless. His clients are multi-billion dollar global enterprises.

Step two: Each expert will have detractors and fans. Look at who they are. See if you can determine the balance of opinion. Look at who more closely resembles you – the detractors or the promoters.

Step three: Follow your gut. If the advice makes sense, follow it.

Step four: Be a cynic. Pay for the advice on a benefit to your organisation-basis rather than on a per hour basis. Check the research they quote and always, always have them commit to timeframes and ROI.

So there you have expert advice on how to choose an expert to give you advice. Whether you should trust my advice or not I will leave up to you.