People always ask me why I bother with Social Media, particularly those who are in my profession or are in my age group, a certain older age group.  My answer is simple; I usually tell them it is an effective away to communicate to a wide variety of people. It may not always be simple, but it is certainly effective.  But I also like to add that along with communicating, it is also a great way to listen, yes listen. Social Media isn’t about adding a Twitter or Facebook badge to your website.  It is much more.  One needs to learn how one can use these tools to reach audiences in different ways and listening is one of the things social media lets you do.

Social Media can be a “time-waster”.  Yes one can waste a lot of time, productive work-day time goofing around on Twitter and Facebook as well as other tools similar to these. But I like to use it to leverage my ability to communicate my organizations message. Years ago, about 17 to be exact, I worked at an organization that needed to send a lot of information out to a lot of people quickly and efficiently. We gathered their fax numbers and gave them to a service that would send out mass-faxes to our clients and stakeholders. Think of it as early spamming.  Sounds wasteful and silly, doesn’t it? It may have been, but back in 1993 we were cutting edge communicators.

Today one can call social media a “time-waster” or you can embrace it, learn about it and see how it can make your job of communicating richer and deeper than ever before.  Social Media is simply an evolution in the way we communicate. Some may even say it is a revolution.  It doesn’t have to be time waster. On top of that you might have some fun along the way.

AtMidwest is a great way to learn the basics, improve on some ideas you already have, or become a star in the social media world.  I hope you join and embrace change. Then you can tell the boss you are not wasting time, you are listening to the customer.

P.S. Marty – Erik told me to post this.