Social Karma (Part 1)
Jim Harris in Associations, Events, Social Media tagged DAMA, Enterprise Data World, Social Karma Monday, January 11, 2010 at 6:46PM An effective social media strategy is essential for organizations as well as individual professionals.
Using social media effectively, including blogging and social networking sites (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn), can definitely help promote you, your expertise, your company, and its products and services.
However, it is sad—but true—that too many people and companies have a selfish social media strategy.
You should not use social media to exclusively promote only yourself or your business.
You need to view social media as Social Karma.
If you can focus your social media and social networking efforts on helping others, then you will get much more back than just a blog reader, a LinkedIn connection, a Facebook friend, a Twitter follower, or even a potential customer.
I am not a Social Media Expert—but I play one on the Internet
I am not a social media “expert.” In fact, until late 2008, I wasn't even interested enough to ask people what they meant when I heard them talking about “social media.” I started blogging, tweeting, and using other social media in early 2009.
Please let me do the complex math for you—I still have less than one year of actual experience with social media.
I don't know how you define expertise—and I do acknowledge the inherent difficulty in vetting expertise in such a new and rapidly evolving field—but less than one year of experience with anything does not an expert make, in my humble opinion.
However, I have spent over 15 years in computer science and information technology related disciplines, as a software engineer, consultant, and instructor. I have considerable experience and expertise applying technology in a business context in order to implement solutions for Global 500 companies in a wide variety of industries.
Therefore, I am not a complete moron—but I will leave it to you to determine the actual percentage.
I am currently a full-time writer making all of my income from social media—mainly from blogging and mostly from ghostwriting for corporate blogs.
I am not trying to sell you anything.
I am going to freely share what I have learned so far, including what I have learned from people with far more experience using social media. As I stated previously, I hesitate to call anyone an expert in such a rapidly evolving discipline, but I will mention several resources I have found helpful.
I have absolutely no affiliation or any paid relationship with any person, website, event, product, or book that I recommend.
About This Series
The primary reason that I am organizing my thoughts about social media involves my preparation for an upcoming conference presentation about using social media effectively for business purposes (more details in the next section).
I am publishing this content as a series on my blog, not only to provide supporting material for the small group of people that actually attend my conference session, but also because I have learned firsthand how the two-way conversation that blogging provides via comments from my readers, greatly improves the quality of my material.
Throughout this series, I will combine traditional blog posts with presentation slides, podcasts, and videos, in order to build a multimedia library of supporting material—all freely available, no registration required.
Enterprise Data World 2010
Enterprise Data World is the business world’s most comprehensive vendor-neutral educational event about data and information management. This year’s program will be bigger than ever before, with more sessions, more case studies, and more can’t-miss content, providing over 200 hours of in-depth tutorials, hands-on workshops, practical sessions and insightful keynotes to take you to the forefront of your industry.
Enterprise Data World 2010 will be held March 14-18 in San Francisco, California at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square.
The full conference agenda can be viewed by clicking on this link: Enterprise Data World 2010 Conference Agenda.
The registration options can be viewed by clicking on this link: Enterprise Data World 2010 Conference Registration.
Use the discount code of EDW10SPKR for a $100 discount off your registration fees. (Discount code expires on February 26.)
On Monday, March 15 from 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM, I will be presenting (30 minutes of material and 30 minutes of Q&A):
Social Karma: The Art of Effectively Using Social Media in Business
In Part 2 of this series: We will discuss leveraging social media for “listening purposes only” as a passive (and safe) way to determine what (if any) type of active involvement with social media makes sense for you and/or your company.
Related Posts
Social Karma (Part 2) – Social Media Preparation
Social Karma (Part 3) – Listening Stations, Home Base, and Outposts
Social Karma (Part 4) – Blogging Best Practices
Social Karma (Part 5) – Connection, Engagement, and ROI Basics
Reader Comments (8)
Hi Jim,
Really looking forward to this series!
I think you're a great poster child for how social media can help someone with a traditional industry background "re-invent" themselves for the new economy.
The "light bulb moment" for me with social media (apologies if I'm jumping the gun but I'm a complete social media junkie as you know) was when I realized that you don't have to be the biggest expert in your field, you just have to strive to be the most helpful.
I think vendors in particular have to move beyond simply publishing articles, white papers and generic content and ask themselves - how can we really help our community to achieve their goals (mindset change - this isn't about putting them into SalesForce.com and pushing sales queries at them!)
The same thing applies to everyday bloggers, it's great to publish thoughts and musings but I think to really profit from social media you need to have a strategy for how you can help your network - as you say, a lot of blogs are very inward focused and suffer as a result.
Excited to see where you go with this and best of luck with the EDW presentation.
Jim,
I am looking forward to the series.
For my money, you know more about social media than many self-anointed experts.
Phil
I couldn't agree more with Dylan on this point:
I think vendors in particular have to move beyond simply publishing articles, white papers and generic content and ask themselves - how can we really help our community to achieve their goals (mindset change - this isn't about putting them into SalesForce.com and pushing sales queries at them!)
I am amazed that most vendors simply put pro-vendor material on their site.
I for one take this with a 50 pound bag of salt. If I owned a software company, I would hire guys like Dylan and Jim to blog about issues that my products help to address.
Get people talking about the issues first, then the solutions. I suspect that less overt marketing methods would benefit casual readers and, perhaps, result in more sales than pep-rally-type docs.
@Dylan I definitely share your perspective about striving to be the most helpful. It seems people often seek to demonstrate their expertise and establish their authority - regardless of whether or not they actually help others.
Sadly, egotism and expertise are often thought to be synonyms by many.
@Phil Yes, I agree with you - selling (and any other kind of professional or personal interaction) has always been about first building some level of rapport. This doesn't mean trying to be everyone's best friend.
At least listen to what problems people are talking about and determine if your solution could actually help them.
Thanks for your comments, your feedback (as always) is greatly appreciated.
Well said Jim!
I recently brushed up against this territory as well. It's all about learning and helping each other along.
Cheers.
Jim, the series is excellent. Really like the transparent approach.
Your live blogging skills boggle the mind.
Keep up the great work.
Congrats on the speaking engagement!
Knew you were destined to share "good stuff" with the masses - by virtue of your blogging and other social networking activities and specifically because you do go beyond the mere post and dash format.
White papers need to go back to being useful by containing information with less sales spin and fluff. If you can get the participants to rethink their "white paper" content creation and distribution, it would help the profession(s) immensely.
Good luck in SF - May see you out and about.
@Geoff – Excellent point, it definitely is all about learning and helping each other along.
@Shawn – Thanks, especially for your blogging, which has provided many valuable insights on the impacts of social media on the business intelligence space.
@Corinna – Thank you for the kind words and encouragement. I hope we have a chance to talk in San Francisco. Your presentation on social networking at Enterprise Data World 2009 was great and tremendously helpful to me since at the time I was very new to social media.
Thank you everyone for your comments, your feedback is truly appreciated.