A couple of months back, I flew in to speak to a crowd of business execs down in the Deep South. It was a rainy and raw day, really the type of day that made you want to roll over and go back to sleep but a larger than expected sized group turned out. I started off that speech with a simple question – “What is Social Media”?

Social media sometimes requires that we communicate in short bursts. We literally have 3 seconds to “hook” someone’s interest, which is roughly a quick glance. Don’t believe me? Next time you are doing a search on Google, see how much time you spend looking through each of the results that show up. My bet is that you quickly glance at them until you find one that “hooks” you and you click on it. This is pretty similar to the way social media works too and we need to get used to communicating this way.

 I have the distinct pleasure of exchanging ideas with one of today’s most thought provoking strategists and futurists – Terrence (TJ) Kelly.  Recently we talked about the possible impact social media could have on the “Sales Rep” model.  Below is a guest post from TJ that begins to explore an issue which many executives may soon have to address.

 LinkedIn should be thrilled with their success in 2009, having grown well over 100% to end the year with over 53 million registered users.  Rapid growth usually leads to significant changes and LinkedIn certainly provided them in 2009. While we were pleased with the majority of them, there were others that we feel perhaps missed the mark. Let’s take a look…

 Do you remember the book, “Who Moved My Cheese” by Spencer Johnson?  Over the last 6 weeks, I’ve been very busy and had the opportunity to speak to numerous business leaders.  Based on these discussions, it is crystal clear to me that the significant majority of these leaders today, unfortunately fall into the category of “Hem” (the one who refused to look elsewhere for cheese after his cheese disappeared) when it comes to social media.  Social media is changing the business world, and given the Hem mentality, it is causing a lot of frustration for the business exec. Why is that?

 I had some interesting discussions this month with people who I believe are looked upon as “business leaders”.  Interestingly, while they all had a certain curiosity about social media, they really didn’t see it impacting them and they were all very quick to dismiss it in its current form.  Based on my speaking to large groups of mid market CEO’s, unfortunately this response seems consistent in the business place today (which can be very detrimental to a business’ relevance).  So in this blog post let’s review the first two ways to help businesses learn to leverage social media.

 Most of  my blog posts stem from questions I’ve been asked and today’s post is no exception.  Recently, there was a great social media study put together by Chris Burke and Equation Research (will be writting about this in a later post) and one question asked the respondents to name the social media tools they used.  One site was notably absent from the listed responses and that site was LinkedIn. 

 I have been speaking to large numbers of CEO’s and other senior leadership and one thing stands out – a lack of a clear understanding of what social media represents.   To some it’s simply the new tech tool on the internet, to others, it’s something their kids use, while others are completely befuddled by it.  Unfortunately, with all the hype, the core of social media generally gets overlooked mainly because it is so subtle.  Social Media at its core is just that – “social” plus “media”.  It is a conversation across a variety of new media that have altered the way we communicate.  Put another way, social media is a conversation on steroids.  As business leaders, do we have daily business conversations and do these conversations lead to relationships and can these relationships lead to economic benefit?  The answer is yes, yes, yes and until the day we stop having business conversations, social media will be around, although it will always be in a constantly changing form.

 Guest Post by David M. Schwartz 
If you are an executive hoping to reinvent yourself or to change careers, you’re in for major challenges, not only due to unsettling economic times, but because of the difficult process. It’s important to get it right the very first time. When looking to change your career (or your situation) you should be proactive, follow your instincts, believe in yourself, stay the course and consider using the services of an executive career coach to help you make the right transition.

 A recent study by UberCeo.com, took a look at the social media profiles of all of the Fortune 100 CEO’s across sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Wikipedia.  As we’ve talked about here on this blog, at its basic level social media is a “conversation” and the benefit for a business is to engage in those relevant conversations that are already occurring online as they pertain to their business.   The goal for engaging in these “social media conversations” is simple – tap into a natural curiosity relevant to your business, grow that into a relationship and then over time convert that relationship into economic benefit.   Funny, if you take the term “social media” out of that last statement, isn’t this what most business leaders do on a daily basis anyway?  So we were excited to see the results of this study and learn how CEO’s are using social media to expand on what they are already doing on a daily basis.