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.

 We learn from the history books that JFK was effectively the first President who understood and effectively used the new medium of TV.  Today, the new media is Social Media and it is about enhanced communication. It is clear that President Obama understood that and is our de-facto first Social Media President.  In this post, we’ll take a high level strategic perspective of how Obama leveraged social media and see if we can use some of the same strategies for our business.
 

 It’s simple to use, takes only a few seconds to do and it is totally addicting.  No it is not a drug, it is Twitter.  This micro-blog/social network has been experiencing rapid growth & acceptance.  When the terror attacks happened in Mumbai, news started flowing almost immediately through Twitter.  The power of communication on Twitter is so strong, that Barack Obama used it during his campaign with over 160,000 followers who received his announcements.  Given all this exciting growth, perhaps it’s time to peel back the layers and begin to generate some insight into what this all means.