One look around and you will find experts everywhere. They seem to pop up over night. Within 2 minutes on the internet, I could find people claiming to be experts in: nutrition, exercise, fashion, house cleaning, interior design, child care, elder care, pets, marriage, childhood, and addiction. The question is: what really makes someone an expert? Is it experience? Education? Success? How do you weed out true experts from the people pretending to be one..especially on-line?
Looking at an “expert” purely in terms of a definition, it would be a person with a high degree of skill in or knowledge of a certain subject or field. Here are some great guidelines from Daniel Newman via Forbes magazine:
- Consider the source
- Check the facts
- Search or Nimble the author
To take it even further, the Harvard Business Review writes that a real expertise must pass three tests. First, performance must be consistently superior to that of the expert’s peers. Second, real expertise produces concrete results. Finally, true expertise can be replicated and measured in the lab.
My additional tips:
- Use common sense. Just content writing doesn’t make someone an expert.
- Just because something is on the internet does NOT make the information true.
- It’s OK to admit you are an amateur…one that is eager to learn and grow.
In today’s world it is really hard to weed through the garbage. We are all searching for authentic information that will provide the best outcome for us. Keep the above mentioned things in mind as you scan through social media and the internet in search for the latest information on a topic. Hopefully, it will save you from wasting your time.
“Owning a drone does not a pilot make.” ― Alex Morritt
“All great achievements require time.” – Maya Angelou
Life in Snippets 