In this blog I raised a number of times the red flag about the well-known phenomenon of "experts" or "gurus" etc. who mushroom when management hypes erupt. The Social Media hype could not be an exception so with a lot of interest I read the post in the blog of Stephan ten Kate titled (in Dutch*) " The public ends the deception of Social media experts".
One thing some Social Media experts seem to ignore is that today there are no secrets, the public has the means and the will to scrutinize everything; treating the customer with respect is now the rule. In the good old days we would say that one unhappy customer might talk about the bad experiences to 10-12 others. Today an unhappy customer can reach thousands or even millions with his/her bad experience. The Social Media have made today the Word Of Mouth potential advantage but also a substantial risk factor for those making unsubstantiated and bases product (or service) claims. The post of Stephan shows clearly what the power of the Social Media is; he talks also about this in his reflection.
*For non-Dutch speakers a Google translation could help at least for the text!
