I’m right. I am, I am, I am.

There’s a growing trend for a particular type of social media post…let’s call it the ‘expert view’.

If you spend any time on Linkedin or Twitter in particular, you’ll see a lot of these and they all take a similar form – either they will be a selfie video of the expert, or a written list akin to the ‘x things you must do…’ style posts.

Now, as we espouse ourselves, people buy from people with credibility, and your subject matter expertise, and the communication of it, is a clear and effective way of building credibility. So the intention behind these posts make sense.

However, credibility isn’t simply a result of what you know, it’s also a direct result of the way you conduct yourself.

Yet it seems to me that most of the content follows this type of structure:

TRUTH BOMB…

…YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.

I’ve been doing this for years and I work with a lot of customers.

So, this is the way you do it.

And the way I do it is the only real way of doing it properly.

Don’t be an idiot, do it my way.

Just doesn’t feel credible to me. Particularly when it is often coupled with an absolute, cast-iron, won’t be wavered view that comes out as comments to posts with any form of contrary opinion.

For me, real experts ask the right questions rather than tell you how it should be done. They ask the right questions of you, and get you to ask the right questions of yourself – the information that creates sits at the centre of an expert response.

Matt Neal,
Managing Director,
Differentiated