Thoughts on Social Media: Shared at the 2008 WIW Conference

Social media is any form of communication that connects people with each other and with ideas or news. For example, the ancient marketplace was a form of social media; that is where everyone went to find out what was going on and to see what was happening with others.

 

The concept of “cafe society,” the idea of seeing and being seen, most popularized by the Parisians is another example of social media.

 

The telephone was an advance in social media; for the first time, people across town or across the world, could be connected. I remember my mother and her friends talking on the phone for hours – it was how they stayed connected when they couldn’t see each other.

 

Now, we have the internet and electronic communication. Email, instant messaging, cell phones – which removed the requirement of being near the phone – online services like LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace, connect not only our voices but our photos and our writings.

 

Age is not a barrier to social media, but we do have to adjust to the new ways of staying connected. It is called “evolution,” and I would pose the theory people ages 35 to 50 are the most adaptable generation. We weren’t raised with computers or technology, but we not only adopted these changes, we embraced them.

 

Associations are organizations that connect people; in many ways, they are the original “social media” as far as being a tool to stay connected as opposed to individuals doing it informally.

 

However, associations seem to be having a tough time adjusting to the newer social media tools. Rather than seeing their usefulness, many are being distracted by their “technology-ness” as opposed to seeing them as an evolution in tools, just like the telephone replaced the marketplace, or neighbors talking over the back fence.

 

Like any tool, social media needs to be chosen for the task at hand and the audience to be reached.