Has social media arrived? Des's newsletter Jan '10
Published: Sun, 01/31/10
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Has social media arrived at last? Hi
Thank you for signing up to receive my newsletter.
In this issue I share some thoughts about the current state of play
in social media and provide links to three really useful
books.
There is also a short burst on the new venture,
focused on the Boomer generation, which my colleague Bill Vick and I are launching
in February.
I guess like everyone who produces a newsletter I want this to be interesting and useful. I will value any feedback you care to give me and if that's critical please know I can take it. :) Just email me at des (at) socialmediapm dot com And remember there will always be an easy unsubscribe link and I won't take it personally. If you wish, you can read this newsletter online. Has social media arrived and if so how
do you tell who the real experts are?
My sense is that sometime in the past six months
or so there has been a dramatic shift around the term "social media".
Less often now, I believe do people look at me strangely, quizzically when
I say "social media". And no wonder.
There seems to be a plethora of conferences, seminars, webinars, breakfast presentations and other events on one or other aspect of social media. And not just in the USA. Next week there are parallel conferences on social media in Hong Kong and Singapore. In April several stars of the social media firmament will be speaking at a conference in Sydney. I think it is fair to say that social media has arrived. And, as is probably inevitable at such a time, more and more people seem to be emerging from previous social media obscurity, wearing without any evident self-consciousness a "social media expert" or "social media guru" label. Some of my colleagues who have been working in this field for a while are a bit miffed about this phenomenon. I'm more philosophical about it. And speaking personally, it is not false modesty but a recognition of how much is happening and how much I don't know that I eschew the "expert" and "guru" tags and describe myself as a strategist in this field. No doubt some people will be taken in by some of the new instant experts who have done a one day course on how to be a social media expert. But without a regulatory framework, which for me would be using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, I think we just have to leave it to the market to sort out who the more competent people are. It would also help for business people and others who manage organisations, in government and in the not-for-profit sector, to become sufficiently "social media literate" to be able to ask good questions and better able to sort the flimflam folks from those who have the knowledge and experience to be truly helpful. For anyone you know who is feeling a bit mystified by it all and is interested in getting a grasp of what is happening in social media and what that means for business, there are three books I recommend wholeheartedly (see my blog post Three Excellent Books on Social Media ) - Paul Chaney's The Digital Handshake Gary Vaynerchuk's Crushit! and Shel Israel's Twitterville Boomers Next Step As many readers of this newsletter will know, Dallas, Texas based executive headhunter, entrepreneur, coach and author Bill Vick and I have co-authored a couple of works, the LinkedIn for Recruiting book and the Big Biller audiobook. One of my favourite social media stories is that we have done all this without ever having met virtually, thanks especially to the Internet "phone and video" service Skype. Well, this February Bill and I are formally launching a project we have been quietly putting together, Boomers Next Step, to help Boomers who, whether by choice or in response to circumstances such as the GFC, are looking at what their next step is to be - a new phase in their career, a whole new career, or maybe establishing their own business. You can listen to us talking about the project on the recent episode of my Des Walsh dot Com show on BlogTalkRadio. As a preview of what we will be focusing on with the Boomers Next Step project, Bill has done a stack of short video interviews which he has uploaded to the site. By the way, on his EmploymentDigest.net site, Bill has a great interview with Gary Vaynerchuk, on social media and why it matters, which was done before Gary published the Crushit! book. That's all for now. Till next time, go well
Des Des Walsh
Social Media Strategist and Business Coach
Disclaimer: links for books recommended in this newsletter are Amazon Associate links, so I get a small commission if anyone clicks through and buys. The books should also be available at or through any good bookstore. I bought the copies of Gary and Shel's books. My copy of Paul's book was a gift from the author. |
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