Just Who Do You Think You Are?

I'll be speaking at this year's Big Design Conference doing a presentation I've named "Just Do You Think You Are?" This presentation has nothing to do with the NBC TV show of the almost same name as I am not a celebrity and apparently not anywhere as interesting as Sarah Jessica Parker. My presentation is about social media.

Many of us on Twitter who are not in marketing or PR are acutely aware of the social media people who are two steps away from being full-on spammers. There's a general assumption out there about social media requiring open, frank discussion. This assumption is that everyone with an Internet presence is there to make money. This assumption is so pervasive, it's the driving premise in most social media articles (see Zemanta linked articles after this article). The Social Media Summit this year has the following welcome message:

Dear Fellow Marketer;

Are you using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, but not getting the results you hoped for? Could you use some guidance and fresh ideas? Yes, the promise of social media is strong: Direct contact with customers (and prospects) who were previously unreachable. This means greater exposure and more business opportunity—all without costly advertisements or middlemen. And given this economy, who wouldn't want more business! But if you're like me, you're looking to choose your social media activities wisely, without getting consumed by all the options. You simply want to know what works best.

Michael A. Stelzner's conference is geared toward marketing people. However, I want to point out the base assumption that social media is for making money. The "Social Media Summit" isn't the "PR and Marketing Through Social Media Summit" or the "Social Media Marketing Summit". It's just assumed that you assume that's the main audience for social media content. I'm not saying the conference is good or bad, but I do think it's time to stop having a one-dimensional view of social media.

Blogging, Facebook, and Twitter were not grown by people looking to make money. They are the evolution of human interaction on the Internet. Marketing people are a lot of things, but they are not trail blazers on the Internet. They are opportunistic and swarm technologies once they see ways to "monetize" the environment.

Before I got into social media, specifically Twitter and Facebook as this blog existed before those, I watched from the outside without a full understanding of what was going on. A friend of mine continually tried to explain it to me, but I would only mock it. The reality was I didn't understand the value it had for me personally. I had a tainted opinion of social media based on the money making assumption.

What a mistake it would have been to continue to ignore my friend. I have made genuine friends through Twitter and have broken out of a slump of depression as a result. I met people within my own company I would never have met and discovered our mutual desire for Sprint to succeed. Several of these coworkers were using a completely genuine, Cluetrain Manifesto approach to customer service. I also started meeting people here in DFW and broke out of my shell. Finally, I discovered the UX community and began to rethink my approach to work and career and my professional education was resurrected from a dusty tomb.

Come to Big Design to hear me present on these ideas. I'm excited to share my personal story because I know it's relevant to a lot of people who don't consider themselves marketeers.