It is a fact that companies are increasingly aware of the importance of managing their image well in Social Networks, so, increasingly, they are concerned with hiring a professional to take the helm of the ship the good Port of Branding and visibility.

A good professional in any field is built on the basis of a good training, and this, adding experience in the sector.

This is “easy” when it comes to a “traditional” sector, such as, for example, a doctor, a bricklayer, a computer specialist, but when it comes to the professions that have to do with the world of Social Media, the thing changes, it is more relative, for the very novelty of everything related to it.

It is clear that the doctor has to know the medical theory perfectly and then know how to apply it to the practice, the same thing that happens to the computer scientist, but, really, at the moment of truth, it is the praxis that turns them into true professionals.

In Social Media, there are still no regulated studies that certify a professional, there are no Social Media Experts qualified as such. The users that we consider experts are professionals from other fields such as, for example, traditional Marketing, who have managed to reconvert. In the ecosystem of Social Networks there is space for philologists, marketing, journalists, computer scientists, professors, public relations …, they can be experts in their sector, but, no one accredits them as experts in Social Networks.

There are, on the other hand, courses given by institutions, which grant their own Diploma of assistance, which we can use to train us in this field: Blogger, WordPress, SEO, Social Networks, Marketing Plan, Geolocation …

However, despite the novelty of this channel, there is a lot of information on the internet used daily to keep learning, and, many people working on it.

For many professionals, the only method of learning has been trial and error, that is, and, as I have heard more than one professional say, try, try and prove, and what does not work, change it. This has its part of reason, but, to tell the truth, Social Media requires a more than exhaustive planning, although it is also true that in many occasions, to carry out campaigns in these media, we can use this method of trial and error.

The training for a professional of Social Media is key to know the basic fundamentals of this sector, to grasp the most used concepts and to learn to use the tools that we will have to use to work, but in this case, the practice is what will give us the expertise. We can learn to manage a reputation crisis in a course, but we will not know how to do it until we come face to face; we can theoretically know the benefits of using Pinterest as a tool for curing content or to attract traffic to our website, but we will not experience it, we will not know it firsthand until we get down to work and try to use this social network to generate visits.

What do you think, is training or practice in Social Media more important?