What’s your social media guru personality type?

Reflecting on many responses I received in regards to my previous blog post about being judged on social media expertise, It brings to my attention, all the different (yet ‘classifiable’) personality characteristics that are prevalent in some of the most recognizable social media gurus on the web. Now I’m not going to get as crazy with this to go as far as classifying a Myers-Briggs type, but I will make this enjoyable to read. Now get on and start sizing up your favorite social media guru’s.

What’s your social media guru personality type?

The Regurgitator – This type of social media guru lives for Twitter and posts, on average 42 Tweets per day, most of which are RTs, containing a slim to in-existent amount of original content (when they do, it is basically a link to a blog post where they regurgitate more information they’ve collected from other people). “Gurges”, as I like to refer to them, will attempt to drive traffic to their poorly arranged websites (usually ending in a .net because the .com version of their domain was unavailable and they were too unoriginal to come up with another one).

The Self Loving Douche – This can be both male and female (just to clarify, since I rarely hear chick’s referred to as douchebags). The characteristics of this social media guru are very one-sided, and by one-sided, I mean, all they care about is themselves. You can identify these types of gurus by looking at their Twitter profile pages (actually going to their twitter.com/doucheynamegoeshere url). On their profile pages you will most-likely find an incorrectly scaled, low-res background image (usually tiled) that shows action shots of them engaging in some type of cult inauguration public speaking event. These gurus are tweeting affirmations who love to thank each and every follower for RTing, but only looking at this as an opportunity to parlay the same message (that they initially posted) over, and over, and over again. Ex: “Thanks so much! RT @user1 @user2 RT @methedouchebag blah blah blah blah blah”. Remember, its not about you, its about them.

The Righteous Warrior- These social media guru personality types seem to be very well perceived and respected (perhaps in fear of being targeted). The Righteous Warrior scours the web in search of other social media gurus to inflict un-requested critique and opinion on other social media gurus. This guru doesn’t like to use the term “guru” and will cringe at the notion that anyone would ever consider themselves, (or social media at that) a defined industry profession. Righteous Warriors love to talk about their feelings and will frequently post tweets about how they’re dying for a hot shower or a beer. They also feed off of fellow warriors, posting what should be private conversations for their 50K followers to see, in hopes of drawing attention to the oh-so-important issues at hand. More than often referred to as a “consultant” or “strategist”, these gurus are usually too scared to list their client line-up or reference any previous campaigns that they may or may not have worked on.

The Hot Chick sans any other redeeming qualities - Twitter comes secondary to this social media guru, with most of the action happening on Facebook (because Twitter only lets you showcase one photo). Hot chick guru started in social media back in 2003 with MySpace and is master bulletin poster. Hot Chick is huge on YouTube with her channel containing everything from how to get that smoky eye look to a video-photo slide show of her most recent head shots. Since her transformation into a brunette, Hot Chick has discovered Gizmodo.com and because of her ridiculous hotness, has been signed on to star in her own reality show, where she tells you about all the awesome iphone apps Ashton Kutcher is downloading.

The Strategist with no Strategy – The SwnS. Going through a mid-life crisis, this guru is possibly a former creative, perhaps with an account or b2b background. “Principal” of super social media llc, this guru is great at talking, extremely articulate and has talked his way through scoring a second round of funding. Notorious plagiarizer, loves PowerPoint but has never touched Keynote. The Strategist with no Strategy gets your business by talking you through the “Social Media Marketing” wiki and re-branding real strategists’ white papers. This guru has 5 interns working for them, conjuring up bullet points on the top-level processes of navigation for social media tools. Loves to use acronyms and trend words like “2.0″ for everything; “BMW 2.0, iPhone 2.0, Vodka-Tonic 2.0″.