Keeping up with the Social Jones’s….

I’ve only just got into social media in the last 8 months, and now people are telling me it needs to change. What? Slow down people… I’m enjoying this. Let’s enjoy getting great at something before shifting it along a pace!

I heard an amazing thing today. A social media speaker stood proud and acclaimed that “we’re at a social media gathering, and we haven’t even mentioned twitter and facebook!”. Gentle applause and a couple of “whoop”s came from the room. Hold on? Why not talk about these things? …or is just playground social media now… `So last month`… and all that? (of course people were quoting with this line with glee on their laptops with the event hashtag after a… oh, er… tweet… )

We all want to make the social media experience awesome, more effective, more stimulating, and more productive – and absolutely we want to build on the layers that exist and develop. But please don’t exclude the little people who hopped on the bandwagon in late 2009 or 2010 and are still trying to get to grips with communities, and social media protocol.

The problem with a selection of social media aficionados, is that they like to be `gurus`, that bit ahead of the ball – in order to retain guru status. I had a conversation with one recently who when I referred to a relatively new social media agency, told me “ugh, they’re all doing it now aren’t they?”.  Well no, they’re not “all” doing it now – and that’s why more social media doers are opening agencies and winning untouched business, and others are just talking about it and sneering from their lofted guru-ness. 

I love my social media, and the people in it. I love recruiting in the industry, and I have some awesome clients. I love the online, and love the offline even more. But I swerve to avoid the people who offer a `cyber-tut` when I walk in the room because I’m new in town. Social media is about being social… and that means inclusion, engagement, and that every opinion matters.

We all have different purposes for social media – but nobody does it wrong, unless they decide so themselves – because it didn’t achieve their personal objective. And no guru does it `better` than the rest of us.

Lets keep social media social, and not a fine art that has those who can, and those who try. The basis of what makes it great might just become diluted, by the people who act like they own it…