When you launch a major new venture, it's always a good thing to ask yourself "why?" And often, "for whom?"
As any entrepreneur will tell you, the answer is never simply, "because it will make money."
We're launching today our first-ever live event, The Social Shake-Up. The "why?" is simple. We're about community, we interact with smart people who are our contributors on our site, and we connect with our larger community in our weekly webinars, in our LinkedIn Group, our Facebook page, and on twitter. So we should spend some time with our community face-to-face, to learn more about them and to offer an opportunity for them to share their experiences directly with us and with each other.
"For whom?" Ah! In the nearly seven years that I've been running Social Media Today, I've come to know many of the people who work with growing companies and large enterprises, and I've particularly come to admire those people for whom social is not an intellectual exercise but a passion and a mission. Those who understand that to achieve something, to be truly effective, you will inevitably face challenges internally and externally, and will have to sell your vision of social business on a daily basis. You need to articulate the value beyond "this is what everyone else is doing," and convince both peers and your C-Suite that social will provide ROI and a closer relationship with your customers.
Finally, you need to have an eye for the future, and for what strategy that you adopt now will leave you the flexibility to adapt to mobile, to yet more technological change, and to continued listening from your customers.
So we're going to give you a terrific place (Atlanta) and a time (September 15-17) to share your heroic efforts with thought leaders, practitioners and partners, and other heroes. Please join us at The Social Shake-Up.