Dear Bob ...
I'm an aging CIO. I know I'm aging because I don't get Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter, and even LinkedIn makes me uncomfortable.
[ Also on InfoWorld, an Advice Line reader asks: "When starting a business, are LinkedIn and Facebook enough?" | Get sage advice on IT careers and management from Bob Lewis in InfoWorld's Advice Line newsletter. ]
Call me old fashioned, but I prefer to have face-to-face conversations than Facebook conversations. I think these electronic substitutes for human relationships are taking us all in some unfortunate directions, which is why so far I haven't paid much attention to the younger staff members who have been telling me we need to get on board with social networking.
What do you think, Bob? Is social media a good thing or a bad thing?
- Old timer
Dear Old Timer ...
You have, I'm afraid, fallen for the logical fallacy Richard Dawkins once dubbed "Argument from Personal Incredulity," or "API" for short.
You don't get social media. I can't argue with that -- it's a statement of fact.
You think it's taking human relationships in unfortunate directions? I doubt it. It's certainly taking them in different directions than what you and I are comfortable with, but our comfort doesn't define good and bad. If it did, it would be proof of something I've always suspected: Beets are evil and should be eradicated, or at least banned from salads.
I don't get beets. Other people do. For the most part we leave each other alone, except when I offer the beets that came with my meal to a companion (good for both of us) or they try to persuade me to give beets another try (bad for our relationship).
I don't get social media either, for that matter -- at least, not entirely. My perspective, though, is that I'd better figure it out, because something important is going on out there. Huge numbers of people are becoming friends with huge numbers of other people they've never met, exchanging views, gossip, trivialities, and other information about each other. They're doing it online instead of face to face, which also means they're able to do so with people who live in other countries and cultures. That's something you and I can't do face to face, to our detriment.
Last I looked, Facebook alone had something like 100 million subscribers. I'd be willing to bet some of them are your company's customers, which means if your company isn't interested in meeting them there, your competitors will be able to interact with them in a medium you've shut yourself out of.
Not good business.
So if you don't get social media and you're supposed to be the person who leads your company's technology strategy, I'd suggest the problem isn't with the social media.
- Bob
This story, "Making a business case for social media," was originally published at InfoWorld.com.
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Download now »From my experience, social media is what you make of it. I admit, there is a lot noise that comes across on sites like Twitter, but you make the choice to follow that person. If they aren't saying anything that interests you, just "unfollow" them.
Because of the new relationships I've built online, I have met a wide range of people, socially and professionally. For instance, I've found that there are a lot of non-publicized events that happen in my city that I would have never known about, if it wasn't for Twitter.
A lot of the area bloggers/tweeters regularly meet to discuss our other interests. There have even been major events here, such as BarCampCHS (http://www.barcampchs.org/) that happened because of our use of social media. Some local user groups have also been formed because of meeting others online.
Professionally, I have met a lot of people in my industry from all over the country, and a few outside the country. We are constantly bouncing ideas back and forth and getting recommendations for projects we may be working on. The fact that we usually do this on Twitter is great because others can easily chime in with their opinions.
It's all in how you use it. As Bob said, your competitors are using it, and not always in the most obvious way.
Some so-called success stories are ridiculous if you start crunching the numbers. So it is pretty much like in the first wave of the internet when these things were prevalent, too.
Again, we need to focus on two things: Relevant content and true interconnectivity and dialog. (http://www.tage.de)
First - those people who "friend" you are not your friends. For the most part they are not even aquaintances. True, a few of the people are personally known to you but even they might not be considered your "friends". So, it is very questionable that the ones you have never met in person are really what we all know classically as "friends". Social media will never substitute for real friends. Those people are rare. Think about it, you may know many hundreds of people but very few wold make it onto your list of real friends. Not everyone you have dialog with is your friend.
Secondly, the value of Social Media is more about polling than about communication. Anything that limits what you say to 25 words or less is seriously compromising any true communication. For the polling end of things social media works quite well. Coke a Cola can become your friend and you can subscribe to their tweets. They get to know all sorts of marketing data about you by engaging in the social media. (Looks like they didn't tweet so well with costco though) Very good for them but only for the serioulsy socially challenged would that substitue for a real relationship. So, if you are in marketing or sales it looks like twitter and facebook et al could be useful. For the rest of the business community it has no benefit and most definitely could be considered a distraction.
Obviously the IT deparment needs to be involved in enabling the sales people to safely and quickly utilize the social media of their choice.
The only possible exception might be if the business of your company is to provide technical support to your customers. Even then I think it should probably be driven by sales so that established support channels can be advertised. Can you imagine if one support person told anyone who contacted him that Twitter was the best support channel and another one was directing people to Facebook?
Now if your real goal is to make contacts to assist with your next job search...
Social Media is not inherently good OR bad. It is a facilitator for interaction and communication. If you have no message to give or no information you wish to receive, then Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, et al, will provide no greater benefit than IM and email and phone.
If, however, you have a message that you have crafted and wish to disseminate quickly and effectively, or you wish to get a quick pulse on some issue, then these tools will provide you with a better vehicle for communication and interaction than email and phone will.
As with any other tool, you need to have a strategy, and you need to ensure that misuse is minimized or eliminated, but rest assured that these tools provide business with a faster and sometimes more effective means of interaction than email and phone.
After all, if you're comfortable speaking email, but your potential clients and partners are more responsive to social media, then how are you moving your business ahead? You have to go where the people are if you want to get the people engaged.
No, Social Media cannot eliminate the need for face to face communications, but it is not trying to do that. Instead, it can help you and your organization remain in the public consciousness until you are ready to make a more personal interaction.
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