The Best Things in Life Really ARE Free

I saw something interesting today. There’s a website that offers “social media certification”. Its blurb mentions that for only $1495, you will receive the following benefits:

• Intensive CSMMC (Certified Social Media Marketing Coach/Consultant) 12-week certification program
• 12 one-hour high-impact interactive classes and 1 bonus session
• An intensive content-rich training manual
• Links and resources “worth thousands”
• A web-based interactive forum

Sounds great – a certification that will allow you to become a social media consultant/expert for less than $1500 and within 12 weeks of knowing nothing about social media. What are you waiting for?

Forgive me if I sound blase, but this just doesn’t seem right.

Twelve hours to learn all you need to know that will have you consulting businesses counting on your social media knowledge? Twelve hours to get deep into what it is that makes social media work and what doesn’t? Twelve hours to learn what the highly-respected social media guys have taken years to learn, and continue to learn?

I don’t know. Maybe the guy that runs this course can teach you how to be a social media consultant and the $1500 is worth every one of your pennies. After all, his profile certainly reads well.

But you know what – you can pretty much already get this information and best of all it’s free.

Listen to guys like Chris Brogan, Christopher S. Penn, David Alston, Peter Kim, Amber Naslund and Justin Levy. These guys are telling you all these things and more every day. On Twitter. On their blogs. On video blogs.

If you really want a certificate to say you’ve completed a tele-seminar, by all means go with the CSMMC course. After all, free advice can’t be as good as paid advice, right?

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