I always enjoy seeing which of the targeted Facebook ads may appear on the right side of the page.   It’s a game of “are they guessing me right?”.  They usually are about planning a wedding, coffee, Penn State and fitness (they’re also probably trying to nudge me to the treadmill more, so, thanks Facebook ads).  Even when I was traveling overseas two years ago, the ads were about businesses local to where I was staying.

There has been one ad lately that has appeared on my page almost daily.  It’s advertising one of the countless “certification” programs being offered by schools and universities for me to become an “expert” in internet marketing and social media.

The ad in particular is from a University in northern California telling me that in eight weeks (just eight weeks!!) I can become a Certified Internet Marketing Expert!  In 24 weeks, I can complete all three certificate programs and receive my Master Certificate in Internet Marketing.  All of these courses are taught by industry leading-experts.

I decided to click on the ad, and I was brought to a landing page that told me all about their programs in very vague language.  There was also a 3-minute video by one of their ‘expert’ instructors talking about their program.  I sat through the video twice and took notes.  I’m told that I can become an expert in a measurable, ROI-driven dynamic field.  I’ll learn tactics from Mr. Instructor, this University’s “Subject Matter Expert” (which he twice reminds me this program is the first and only of its kind!).  I’ll take a deep dive into subject matter to gain insights into a comprehensive body of knowledge.  These are scalable and customizable training platforms for my company’s marketing department for people to earn “University-backed credits” to become “experts”.  I need a shovel to dig me out of all of this jargon!

All of this information was delivered with the enthusiasm of telling someone they had a deadly disease.  It was also painfully clear that this was all being read off of a teleprompter (eyes noticeably moving, long, deliberate pauses).

I then took this “expert” and looked him up on Twitter.  His last 10 days of tweets have been Foursquare updates on where he is.  No real content.  No audience interaction whatsoever (except for a retweet about signing up to attend a social media conference).  And most importantly, only 486 followers.  I would think that an “expert” should have thousands of followers, eager to hear what they have to say about new media, internet marketing and Web 2.0.

I further investigated the “expert” instructor’s website to find that his blog is updated about once every 5 weeks.  There are so many topics to discuss on a daily basis about all of this, but he can only find something to blog about a little more than once a week?  At this point, I didn’t need Nancy Drew or Dateline NBC to tell me that this Master’s Certificate program was fishier than the ocean.

So I decided to call this school to find out what this was all about.   My call was answered by a third-party accrediting body, and my very friendly representative assured me that this program is, in fact, affiliated with a major University.  For $5995 I can take all three courses and receive my Master’s certificate.  HOWEVER – my credit hours would only be accepted into a Bachelor’s degree program if I wanted to further my education beyond this certificate.  To use these credits toward a REAL Master’s degree would be completely useless.

My advice to anyone looking to really learn all about social media, internet marketing, advertising and Web 2.0 is to stay far away from programs like this.  They truly are worthless.  Despite the fact that there are salary figures on this University’s website saying I can make up to $81,000 a year as a “Social Marketing Manager” (salary info being cited from a widely-used internet-based salary information website), this $6000 is money better spent on a bag of magic beans.

The very best way to learn about social media is to immerse yourself in it.  Get online!  Read websites like Mashable and start a Twitter account (if you haven’t already – which you should as soon as you are done reading this!).  Buy Gary Vaynerchuk’s book “Crush It” and get inspired.  When you click to follow Gary on Twitter, you’ll notice that he has over 850,000 followers.  Now that is what I would consider an expert worth learning from – from basically the cost of an internet connection and a cup of coffee.

Follow JSN @jsncafe