Getting Back to Where We Came From

Oct 9, 2011 | blog, featured

The Gate by mx2-fotoIt wasn’t so long ago, not quite a decade yet, when I first discovered what a blog was. The idea of sharing ideas and publishing them to the world was new to me. That was what journalists did, and story tellers. Not some computer guy from Minnesota.

Yet I was wrong. I read blogs from all sorts of folks, from all walks of life. The blogs with topics furthest from my own experiences were the most interesting, of course. Through the months and years, the people I knew grew from a couple dozen to hundreds, then a few years later, thousands.

The impact personally, was tremendous, allowing me to start publishing my own ideas on how to approach a problem. Allowing me to present my ideas, which I shared with hundreds of others, on communications and social communication in business. I found my voice in creating my own personal brand, and launching forth a new, second, career in sharing these ideas.

Eventually, these things lead us all back to where we came. I started branching out from Information Technology, and find myself bringing new ideas back to IT in the last couple years. The last four years I’ve worked on multiple solutions with three different fortune 500 companies. All in different ways. All for different reasons.

Today, I find myself looking back on the experiences from the past decade. Not only the technical ones that have dominated my career, but also the social, marketing, and communications ones that I’ve had the pleasure of learning from. I find myself doing what I said back in 2008, bringing social media oriented ideas back to my core skills and incorporating the important and relevant bits.

I think this is the key to social media as we move forward. Instead of the next network, or the next viral video to learn how far – how fast something can travel, it is how much more that we’ve communicated. It’s how we’ve articulated our ideas. It’s how much we’ve listened and learned.

Photo credit: mx2-foto

Learn From The Truth

Mar 23, 2010 | blog

Truth by slowdevil Sometimes its hard to listen to someone telling you the truth.  Deep down you know they’re right, and that’s why you don’t stop them in their tracks.  You know you need to hear it even though you don’t want to.  It’s good for you.

The reality is that we often need to have our perceptions reset, and that means we need to listen.  It also means that we need a network of closely trusted peers that can tell us we’re full of it, and be able to remain close because of it.  If you don’t have that kind of network, then you haven’t been working hard enough in your personal social networking efforts.

Learning that the great idea you have is crap, or simply needs a few easy tweaks is as important as the ideas themselves.  The ability to listen to people who care about your success and take that knowledge forward to make what you do better is a learned skill that true professionals embrace at every opportunity.

One of the things I learned from SXSW this past week was that I had been neglecting a portion of my network.  Many of the people I had connected with years ago, I hadn’t kept up with and my future has been impacted because of it.  That was my realization of truth, pointed out by a friend while in Austin.  It’s not a mistake I’ll make a second time.

Now, what have you learned this week from a friend?

What have you done to help a peer succeed?

Picture courtesy of slowdevil.

Where Do Social Media Pros Come From

Jun 15, 2009 | blog

So where do social media professionals come from? Where does any real professional that really knows there stuff come from? Is there some school that generates these professional people that have experience in so many things, been challenged in multiple ways allowing them to really get the big picture and think about things that most won’t consider? What creates a professional in any industry? How does this come about?

Well to be sure, folks who you find in social media are coming from all sorts of backgrounds. While “traditionally” you’ll find folks from marketing as the most prevalent practitioners. However, I’ve found that folks from any profession are surfacing as real social media professionals. Many never thought about a career transition from what they were doing into marketing, PR, or communications. Many never thought of themselves as writers, broadcasters, teachers, or leaders.

This is what happens in the early phases of any new field. Where did the early “computer geeks” that built out the early I.T. departments made up of micro-computers? They came from accounting, shipping, or it may have even been the boss’s secretary.

The reality is that as many disciplines developed, they were started by folks who really were professionals in another field, but had an interest or passion in something new. Perhaps it was the “new” factor, to be challenged in a new and unexpected direction, learning things that they never thought they’d need to know. To be out on the leading edge and be looked up to because of solving a problem, that could be it too. Sometimes it’s the least expected things that attract people to a job.

Another interesting thing about social media pros is that they have an extensive background. That is, they have multiple skills, developed over time from this job or that opportunity that they’ve followed up on. Whether these skills were intentionally pursued, or unintentionally picked up in some maintenance job, all these skills are what you’re going to look for in a social media professional.

These folks will come with communications skills, writing skills, technical skills, project management skills, and more. They work well under stress, they understand the concerns of the c-suite and legal, yet are able to demonstrate the opportunities for an organization as well as the challenges. They can walk from a technical project status meeting in IT to a creative marketing meeting, and be able to understand and participate with both on equal footing.

Finding these people is a challenge in itself, and you may have to look long and hard to find the right mix of skills for your business. The important part is to not be afraid to look inside, as many hidden gems are laying, waiting to be discovered in your backyard. For social media practitioners are in all corners of every business. Sometimes it’s just being able to recognize raw talent, providing time and experimentation, and letting them lead the way.

Photo Credit: photoholic1

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