Well, I’ll be joining the ranks of their contract facilitators, anyway. Specifically, I’ll be teaching the online offerings of COM0015: Applied Social Media in Business.

And while I won’t be setting the curriculum, I will be drawing heavily on my work with major Canadian brands and large non-profits to talk about the factors that drive social media and online collaboration in the business world (work I’ll continue to do, by the way, I’m not leaving NLC).

On the off chance you’re reading this and you’re a potential student, here are a few things you might want to know about your humble facilitator:

• As a member of the strategic services team at non-linear creations, my work goes well beyond social media and into integrated digital communications, marketing and collaboration – both internal and external. I think this is really important. In the business context, social media can’t stand alone. Social media advocates have to understand how to position the tools and channels in the broader context if they hope to have success.
• I don’t always kneel at the altar of best practices. I do think there is a lot to learn from those who have done well but I think there’s as much or more to learn from those who’ve failed and those who’ve examined the opportunities in front of them and opted to stay on the social sidelines. Why someone chooses not to employ social media in their digital toolbox is just as instructive as why people do. And in social specifically, why would you always want to do what’s been done before? Things rarely go viral twice and what’s possible is always changing. As the great Henry Ford said – if he asked people what they wanted they would have said a faster horse.
• I always treat social media as a plural noun. This is both a practical tip to keep in mind when submitting assignments and a key to understanding how I view social media. Social media aren’t a homogenous entity that you either get or don’t get. Facebook isn’t YouTube; a discussion forum isn’t Twitter. Business communicators and marketers owe it to themselves and their employers to know the various tools at their disposal – social and otherwise.

Ok, that’s enough soapboxing for now. I’m really excited about this opportunity and I have to say a special thanks to Susan Murphy, who is coordinating the program and offered me this gig, and to my bosses at non-linear, who not only gave me the okay to take on this role but also give me the opportunity to work with the diverse client base that I will shamelessly exploit in my teachings.

Right, off to buy some red pens and smiley-face stickers.

*Disclosure: I don’t own a tweed jacket

 photo credit: One Laptop per Child

So good show all around. Now, what comes next?

The overly-used and only slightly-cogent toolbox metaphor

As digital communicators, marketers and community builders of some sort, we’re all equipped with a number of tools to get our jobs done. Social media are a relatively new addition to our toolboxes and we’re doing ourselves, our organizations, our clients and our customers a disservice if we don’t do what we need to do to learn when, where and how to use them. Events like Social Capital are a good way to do that.

But here’s the important thing. Unlike an actual toolbox, there’s no size limit on our particular tool storage units. We don’t have to toss aside an old rusty screwdriver when we bring home the latest cordless laser-guided power drill that the smug bastards at Home Hardware make us covet with their lighthearted and quasi-patriotic commercials.

To bring in yet another over-used metaphor, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  But not everything is a nail. Sometimes you’re dealing with a screw. Sometimes you’ve got a nut. And sometimes you’re using those weird nut-screw hybrid things that IKEA uses to bind the corners of my nightstand and my god why are those so hard to align just right?

Don’t fight single-mindedness with single-mindedness

Promoting the use of social tools simply because they’re social is just as stupid as ignoring social tools simply because they’re social. Honestly, those of us who loosely define ourselves as social media advocates don’t need another self-appointed martyr throwing themselves on the bureaucratic fire in a fit of misguided rage and blind loyalty to one toolset over another.

Sometimes, printing another poster is the answer.

Speaking as someone who makes recommendations on digital tools for a living I can tell you that the social media revolution rhetoric that so many advocates spew out does more harm than good. As my good pal (and self-identified radical) Nick pointed out during our session, Clay Shirky is on to something with his assertion that technology has to become boring and pervasive before it can really be allowed to reach its full potential. Trumpeting the relative values of social media as a singular, revolutionary force is as counterproductive as it is overly simplistic.

If you want to go social, stop talking social

The best way to “sell” social media in your organization is to stop talking about social media and start showing how one or more social tools can help you reach your goals. Don’t advocate for social because it’s social, advocate for the tools that will help you reach your goals – social or otherwise.

Go to conferences, attend events, read blogs and play with the tools. Do all the things you’re doing today and more to understand what social media can do. But don’t forget about the tools and processes that exist already.

Social media provide opportunities to connect and communicate in new and exciting ways. For that reason they are worthy of consideration and as a professional communicator, marketer or community builder you have a responsibility to understand them. But don’t toss aside your rusty screwdriver just yet. It might still come in handy.

photo credit: Cayusa

I’m stoked to have been asked to speak at an upcoming day-long social media / digital communications conference this summer in Ottawa. I think this is going to be a really good opportunity to “take a deep dive,” as we douchey consultants like to say and get beyond platitudes and tautologies.

I’ll be talking about internal collaboration and the importance of connection people behind firewalls along with my good friend Nick Charney as part of the business stream but the organizers have ambitiously tried to create an event for everyone, from the earnest but nervous beginners to those looking to move beyond the fundamentals.

If you’re close to Ottawa this July 23, you should really come out. It’s going to be a good opportunity to connect with a wide range of people and have deep, meaningful conversations about a bunch of different social-type topics.

But on a larger level, I think I’m tired of blogging about online communications. Moreover, I’m tired of reading about online communications. I feel like we’re at a point where the actors outnumber the audience (to borrow from my friend Ryan‘s trusted metaphor) and I’m wary of contributing to the intellectual onslaught.

Signal < Noise

In a lot of ways it’s a bigger example of the driving force behind our decision to put Case Study Jam on hiatus. There’s so much noise right now that I fear we’re unwittingly feeding into the apprehensions and misgivings people have about the tools and channels that it seems a growing number are eager to champion.

As more and more people have adopted these things as mainstream, the chasm between “us” and “them” seems only to have gotten larger. And by constantly talking and writing and blogging and tweeting about them – by analyzing and quantifying the banal and mundane – the social media community is creating an illusion of sophistication and complexity that doesn’t really exist.

No market? No problem! Create one!

We make things sound more complex than they are and in so doing we’ve created a cottage industry of gurus and experts that feed on the insecurities of people who, if they would just step back for a second and apply some common sense, would realize that their years of experience being a fucking human being is all they need to draw upon.

We trumpet best practices and lists of 10 things you must know as though there are hard and fast rules about what we do. There aren’t. Ulimately, what works for you as an individual or as a corporation or as a brand will look a lot like what has worked for you before. There are new media but the messages are largely the same.

There are truly exciting things happening. Technology is evolving and changing the way people communicate. And yes, it’s happening faster than it’s ever happened before. But all of this change doesn’t make the experience of thousands of years of human civilization suddenly obsolete. Augmented reality doesn’t remove the need for empathy. Gamification hasn’t inverted the hierarchy of needs.

So what comes next?

I don’t know. This blog (which was never really supposed to be a social media blog but has come to be one, more or less) will continue to exist but I can’t say how often I’ll post or what it’ll be about. Hell, from time to time I’ll probably write about something related to social media, hypocritical as it may seem. I will continue to be the advocate in a room full of social media skeptics and the skeptic in a room full of advocates. And I will continue to challenge what I feel are misguided assumptions no matter where they stem from.

But I won’t be part of the problem. If you’re a social media person I hope you’ll take a step back once in awhile too. The world won’t end if you don’t write the umpteenth post this week on the importance of measuring influence.

photo credit: Davide Restivo

No. Me neither.

Introducing Influnc – the new standard of online influence. Want to know how influential you really are? Check it out.