This post was guest posted by Mark Dykeman from The Uncanny Broadcasting Brain Blog.

What’s the difference between a social media leech and a social media apprentice? Aren’t they both using a more experienced, more popular social media user? Aren’t they both just along for the ride?

The short answer is: there is a big difference. The difference lies in motivations and in actions.

A Real Life Example

I’ve been trying to learn the ropes of social media for several months. I’ve tried several social media sites, made a few contacts, and hit the front page on two different sites on a few occasions. I’ll admit that my initial motivation was to promote my own content, mainly because I didn’t stop to learn about social media. I thought it was just a place to post my stuff and watch some traffic come my way. My own ignorance and experience led to a lot of frustration and head-scratching.

During the last few months I’ve learned a lot about this medium, although I don’t yet consider myself to be an expert. Fortunately, I have made the acquaintance of a few experienced contacts within social media. Some of those people have submitted my material to various sites and the response to their submissions was an amazing improvement compared to what I was doing on my own. These people helped me get at least ten times the normal response of my own social media submissions, and occasionally even more than that. It’s enough to make you wonder why I would bother building up my own credentials as a social media user. Wouldn’t it be a better use of my time to create content and get someone else to promote it for me? In short, should I leech off of the experience of these experts?

Looking at The Win-Win Situation

There should be advantages to both the neophyte and the expert when the expert helps the neophyte. After all, the expert can immediately use their prestige to get an audience. The benefit to the neophyte is obvious. The expert can claim a “new discovery” as well as a potential source for news. This is win-win, right? In the short-term, this is a win-win scenario. Over the long term it might not be, depending on your goals.

If you just want someone to promote your work, then a social media expert might help you voluntarily for a long, long time. However, after a certain point in time, they might rightly expect some compensation. After all, they are the ones who helped you make it to the big time. Like a leech, you’ve drained them of time and energy to support you. Moreover, you’ve probably benefited from the exchange more than the expert.

Fortunately, some “masters” are more interested in supporting an apprentice, with the eye of having a more valuable contact and peer at some point down the road. Apprenticeship, as we all know, is a long-lived practice whereby the “master” trains an inexperienced but devoted individual. The master provides advice, instruction, coaching, and can also provide a great deal of practical experience to the apprentice.

The social media master might be willing to put the time in to help the n00b in order to help develop this person, especially if they know the n00b is sincere, will conduct themselves respectfully, and that they will pass the collected wisdom on to other people. The expert knows how difficult it can be to get established — other people probably helped them as well.

Apprenticeship – A Worthy Role

In the end, you need to establish your own distinctive voice as a creator. Social media can help you establish and supplement that voice. Some experts enjoy helping other people and they’ll be glad to provide you with some marketing power, especially if they like your content and they respect you.

You can attempt to live like a leech and “feed” off of an expert’s abilities, but like a real leech, you’ll either sicken the expert or else they’ll cut you off to do things that make them stronger. And cutting off a leech usually kills it. You might be force to get professional marketing assistance if you become identified as a leech.

If you really want to get the value of an expert, try being their apprentice, at least for a while. And even if you don’t formally establish a student/teacher relationship, you can always follow their example. If their methods worked for them, they might just work for you. However, if you really want to make a long term contribution, you can act as an apprentice. Learn and grow from this experience until someday you can take on your own protégé. Many people will benefit from this work.

And who knows, maybe someday when you’re ready, you will have your own apprentice.

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