To Shout or not to Shout?

There are a lot of people in the world of digital marketing, and more specifically search engine marketing, who make bold claims to being “experts”, “gurus”, “thought leaders” and many other superlatives about their skills and knowledge.  Im sure some of them are very knowledgeable people who may well be considered experts, Im also very sure some of them are far from expert and more likely have a little knowledge and are getting by on the fact that some areas of search engine marketing are still considered “black magic” by the general public.

What I began wondering the other day around this subject is in this scenario, where you have an industry still in rapid evolution, is it best to shout the loudest, and be a self proclaimed (and sometimes merited) “expert”.  Or keep quiet, and go about your daily work, safe in the kowledge you are at the leading edge of what you do, without feeling the need to go shouting it from the rooftops.

I could easily name a half dozen people who are well known in UK SEO community whose knowledge is shaky at best when interrogated.  Yet these people command reaonsably senior positions and probably earn good salaries, mostly off the back of a persception that they know a lot due to their prominence in the industry.  Then there is probably somebody practicing SEO on an in house site, or with a smaller agency, who knows a great deal and could wipe the floor with these people, but he/she doesnt go to the meetups, engage in the SEO community etc and ends up losing out because of it.

So is it best to shout and run the risk of being found out? Or keep quiet safe in the knowledge you know what you need to know.