The discrediting of an unqualified "expert" - found to have cut-and-pasted the same evidence for several different cases - has led to the collapse of a multi-million pound fraud trial.
This is the headline from a recent BBC article (link below) that highlights how so called 'influencers, thought leaders, and social media experts' need to be validated prior to any commercial engagement.
We hear far too many times of people who declared themselves as 'experts' in their field, they appear to have all the right credentials, we've checked them out as best we could, and when it finally comes to down to delivering that expertise we find that, well, they're not the so called experts and we're left picking up the financial pieces whilst he/she goes on to find another willing victim.
At DLA Ignite, we are the No 1 voice around the world for 'Social Selling', this isn't what we say its what our clients, and our SOV (share of voice) can prove, its also what we can evidence when we say that via our program you can gain an additional 30% in incremental revenues, which is why we maintain the No1 position, consistently week in, and week out.
We are active practioners, so we 'eat our own dog food' so to speak, please feel free to check us out further, look for our 'social proof', and see how we have gained that No1 accolade.
So, when you get a digital spammy knock on the door from someone who professes to be an 'expert' in the Social space, here some due diligence tips that might help you to decide how you might go forwards or not;
Connection request on LinkedIn by a guy working for a “social agency”
This is what I found.
There were 15 people who seemed to operate under this banner:
• 2 of the 15 had personalised their LinkedIn URL (13 hadn’t)
• all of them had just one or two lines against each of the entries in the employment history
• none of them had understood the difference between “summary” and “employment history” of their profile
• those that had bothered to change their background image had the same generic branded image
• none of them had any experience in either sales or marketing
• none of them regularly published articles or posts, and most of them didn’t interact with their network at all
• many of them said things like “I am currently working at…” (presumably they think they will be leaving soon?)
• none of them had a single testimonial from a client
• none of them had more than 10 endorsements for a single skill
• several of the profiles said “ Please feel free to check out the video below…” there was no video
In closing the case, the judge said: "Andrew Ager is not an expert of suitable calibre. He had little or no understanding of the duties of an expert. He had received no training and attended no courses. He has no academic qualifications. His work has never been peer-reviewed."
unknownx500
