This week, the Masters are taking place and you would need to live in a cave not to hear about it or Tiger Woods …and that got me thinking.  Anyone can play golf, albeit at different levels, but ANY one can play.  It’s the same thing with Social Media, anyone can do it but not everyone can perform at the same level or achieve the same results.  Having spoken to many CEO’s over the last few months, it is very clear that a lot of confusion exists in the business world, regarding what Social Media can achieve and WHO can actually achieve those results. “Awareness of social media” (i.e. we’ve heard the names of the sites or we may tentatively use a particular site) is not the same thing as “a business understanding of social media”. Think of it this way, Social Media metaphorically is like golf, anyone can do it, but if you are teeing off on the 72nd hole of the Masters, do you want your cousin’s college age kid or Tiger Woods playing this most important hole for you?

 Earlier this week, a friend was mentioning a discussion he had with a common acquaintance of ours.  This acquaintance, said, “he gave up on LinkedIn & social networking as he simply didn’t see any benefit for himself to continue to pursue it”.   This seems to be a common frustration, yet with LinkedIn now over 30,000,000 registered users and growing at more than 1.2 million users per month and having raised a roughly $100 million in venture funding, clearly they are doing “something right” for social networkers.  Let’s try to examine this dichotomy further.