by Frank Scotti, Chief Idea Officer

It’s pathetic that people with little or no actual helpful knowledge or beneficial experience in their field will label themselves an “expert,” with the sole intention of personal and financial gain, and at the detriment of their customers. In these “experts” defense, though, they have so little knowledge that they actually believe they know everything. These people deserve a flick to the back of the head. Stop it. You’re stupid.

So what defines a person as an expert in his or her field? How do you become an expert in your field, and how do you know if someone is an expert? There is much more to mastering a skill than merely having done it for a long time. Because you have 20 years of driving experience does not make you an expert driver. Knowing how to make spaghetti does not make you an expert cook, nor does tweeting make you an expert in social media.

The hallmark of an expert is intuition. Let me elaborate…helpful and applicable intuition…backed by years of experience and success. While proficient practitioners can intuitively identify problems, experts can also intuitively solve them. They tap into their vast pool of knowledge and effortlessly identify patterns, applying solutions in context to solve problems.

In short, you don’t become an expert. You evolve into an expert. The expert title is bestowed upon those who have vast, practiced, and constantly evolving knowledge in their field. The expert title is also reserved for those who innovate and explore boundaries with positive outcomes. We give these people cool nicknames like Hammerin’ Hank, The Axman, The King, The Chairman, The Duke, Stormin’ Norman and Papa.  We look to them to continue to dazzle, innovate and inspire us. And each time they do, they confirm their status, and nicknames.

To find an expert, look for those who are doing, not just talking. Look for individuals who are solving problems, not just identifying them. And look for those who are considered experts in their fields by others in their industries, not just self declared. Then don’t stop at simply asking who the experts are, but also why they are considered the experts.

Life is like a box of Nestle chocolates, if you let your PR representative have childish quarrels with active Facebook users on your fan page – problems are all you’re going to get.

It’s no news to the social media world that Nestle has just gone through a PR nightmare with their Facebook fan page fiasco. Greenpeace activists that have a problem with the way Nestle extracts palm oil from Indonesian rain forests swarmed the Nestle fan page with modified Nestle product logo’s turning “Kit Kat” into “Killer”.  Their PR representative (who’s identity is still unknown) replied to their gestures with this statement:

“To repeat: we welcome your comments, but please don’t post using an altered version of any of our logos as your profile pic — they will be deleted”.

Deleting wall posts was only the tip of the iceberg; to make this long story short Nestle’s upper management interjected and removed the person responsible from posting anything in part from the Nestle Corporation anymore.

Assistant coaches make false statements on head coach’s twitter feed, marketing interns tag inappropriate hash tags to lead people to their company’s page, professional athlete assistants make rude comments about opposing teams, all of these stories have one thing in common; none of them have a system to checks and balances that help them avoid these PR disasters.

Here’s the system:

Step one: Intern writes twitter post and sends it to boss before posting it on twitter.

Step two: Boss approves twitter post and sends it back to intern with possible revisions.

Step three: Intern posts on twitter with no social media backlash from boss and press!

To make things more effective I recommend creating a twitter post schedule written for several weeks ahead so as to not approve twitter posts on a daily basis. Checks and balances ladies and gentle men- learn it, love it, live it.