You probably noticed that there is a new social media marketing consultant born every minute, if not every second.
Sometimes it feels like everybody that knows how to add Facebook friends is becoming a social media expert.
This causes problems to both sides, clients and consultants. It is not because there is a lot of competition.

The client is in a trap because he cannot tell who really has the knowledge to help him, cannot tell if the person really understands marketing a business, ends up making a decision based on price and regrets this decision over time; besides the fact that he never gets the business results he was looking for at the beginning.

The new coach or consultant thinks this is the shiny thing to be in and to make a lot of money fast, focus on learning more and more tools and not marketing concepts and fails to realize that positioning himself as a social media expert will not lead to long lasting prosperity.

Social media is just a small piece of marketing. It is not isolated and will not work as the only form to market a business. Yes, social media marketing is important, can bring amazing results and can be very cost effective but is just one piece of the puzzle.

Besides, focusing only social media tools can turn a consultant into a glorified assistant and not into a solution provider. Failing to understand business and marketing strategies can make this disaster even bigger.

Good coaches and consultants train themselves to see the big picture for their client, a big picture that can be achieved, pin point gaps, bring new forms of revenue and have a structured process to do so. They also understand the need to mix online and offline marketing strategies. When it comes to social media tools, they understand the use of those tools from a marketing perspective, how to generate more awareness, sales and leads. It is way more than telling a company they need to be connected and transparent.

They also need to understand positioning and online optimization.

Unless they love to go from new thing to new thing like a monkey jumps from one tree to another.