ROXANNE

Photo by Traitlin Burke

You know, lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be an expert, an authority, a guru, a beginner, or a newbie.

I must be on some odd mental track, because two other blogs that I read regularly addressed this very topic of what is an expert, and what’s required to be an expert. Do we need to be an expert at all?

The conventional wisdom is 10,000 hours of dedicated study and focus = an expert.  In fact, Dr. Ericsson and his colleagues studied this topic thoroughly as reported in The Harvard Business Review in “The Making of an Expert.”

Dr. Ericsson and colleagues suggest some specific markers on the road to expertise:

• Practice deliberately
• Take the time you need
• Find coaches and mentors

My take on this is I think there has to be a balance for most subjects in life.  Can you answer the question:

Where do you land on the scale of expertise?

• not knowing anything at all
• knowing something, but need to learn more
• mastering a subject
• a true expert

This X-number-of-hours-to-be-an-expert idea works well when we’re talking about studying a certain subject or mastering a certain field. Obviously, all medical doctors are experts – the average medical student spends 4,670 hours in classroom not counting residency and move onto actual practice.

The problem with being online is that some online marketers are promoting the idea that you really only need to have five to ten hours of study on a subject to be proficient enough in order to make “it” happen.

OK…minimal study and how many hours to what end? To learn HTML? To understand Google AdWords? To make your own blog?

A lot of new “online professionals” take courses online to create an online business model for themselves.  But yet they have no idea to build a website, very basic HTML, what SEO is, how to run a PPC campaign, or how to use social media.

They are on the newbie/beginner scale of not knowing anything or a little, but want the knowledge that comes with mastering a subject–actually many subjects–to get to “How to have a profitable online business.”

I empathize with them. So what to do…If you don’t know the basics, what’s the easiest way to get started?

IMO, the best place to get up and running online is to start with a blog:

• The cost is minimal
• Get a feel for creating content
• Learn formatting and inserting an image/media
• Have an opportunity to use FTP and/or HTML
• Learn/test SEO and back linking methods

…and some other basics to starting online that will serve you well for a long time.

What should you focus on?

With the adoption of social media in the mainstream and a whole group of new people wanting to create an online business, we’re all in an information glut (and a helluva lot of competition). It’s tempting to find something just to make money.

So rather than do what someone else says is the way to make money, think about:

• What special love or skill can you share?
• What do you have a passion for?
• Who would you happily converse with day after day (rather than get just customers)?

Perry Marshall addresses this very issue in his post in answer to “a …very frustrated woman.”  I’m posting this here not to promote more Internet marketers (AT ALL).

But do read Perry’s messages to specific people and what he advised them. You can leave the rest.

Tags: experts, internet marketing, newbies, starting online