Last month I wrote a post entitled: "I Don't Have Time For Social Media!" I was surprised about, some of the conversations it generated.
In one LinkedIn Group, it generated a lot of discussion, some of it saying, Social Media was a waste of time for business professionals and they were not using it. It struck me as ironic and oddly comical that on one of the major social media platforms, there was a heated discussion about why social media was irrelevant.
As I started probing some of the people involved in this and other discussions, I discovered what I thought were strange and limited views of social media. To many, it seemed social media was limited to blogging-and the key question these people asked was, "Why should my people or my company be blogging? Is it a worthwhile use of people's time and our resources?" To others, social media is Twitter, with comments like, "Why do I want to let people know that I'm now going to the bathroom?" In the LinkedIn discussions, oddly, many of the participants did not view LinkedIn as a social media platform.
To tell you the truth, I'm not sure I know what social media is, or that we can ever completely define it. I think it includes all of the well-recognized platforms-Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace (??), blogs, discussion groups/forums, and other similar tools. Most of the major CRM systems are incorporating social capabilities or gateways to social media platforms. Many of the marketing and marketing automation tools include social functionality or gateways. Many of the conferencing, webinar, and distance learning tools have some aspects of social media. Certainly, many of the collaboration tools provide social capabilities.
I am not certain the concept of social media is important. After all, aren't we really talking about how we engage people and how they engage each other? Whether it is customers, employees, shareholders, the industry, friends, family, or whoever, aren't we talking about how we interact, engage, talk, listen, learn, discuss, pontificate, debate, or argue? Isn't all this about communication and collaboration.
While this may sound schizoid, the thing I do like about the concepts around social media is that it is a multi-directional channel, where many of our older channels have been one way. We not only engage our constituents, they engage us, and others in the community.
As business professionals, don't we want to engage our various constituencies in as many ways as we can? Don't we want to engage them where they are? Don't we want them to engage us? It's an ageless concept-after all, we place our advertisements in the publications, or media that have the most impact to our customers. We participate and attend the conferences our customers are attending.
Too much of the discussion about social media is about the tools, not what the tools enable us to do. Every organization or individual will leverage different sets of tools on different platforms-some old school, some new, some not yet determined.
As business professionals, we need to focus on how we most effectively connect with and engage our different constituencies. These will evolve over time, new tools will be developed. We need to continue to reassess all the tools available to us, leveraging those that are most effective in reaching our constituents. We need to leverage the tools most appropriate to our customers.
We need to recognize the conversation about social media is really a conversation about engaging our various constituents- and them engaging us.