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People Do Business, Tools Don’t: How Do You Systemize Social Media?

By on June 18, 2009 in Social Media Marketing
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I’ve been thinking about some of the things we’ve been discussing on building43 — A community for people fanatical about the Internet — and things that have been bubbling up for a while in other spheres of conversation.

We, as a western business culture, seem to be really caught up and infatuated with the amount of tools we use, not excluding me.  I’m a gadget junkie and tool freak!  I have so many accounts for different web applications and services it’s crazy.  There is so much out there to experiment with and test.  Part of me thinks there is a level of unproductivity because of this behavior another part me thinks there is a lot to learn through experimentation with these tools and technologies.  What do you think?

Well, I read a great post on ProBlogger this week by Nick Thacker called 5 Ways To ‘Systemize’ your Blogging.  It really rang home with me as it is part of the practice I advise clients to take in developing their content strategy.  I admit I need to practice better what I preach with my new blog here.  Why is the this relevant to People Do Business, Tools Don’t?

People are the lifeblood of any business.  People do the work.  People work with customers – people.  People manage people.  People make the plans and people take action or don’t.

Tools on the otherhand — computuers, phones, web applications — are levers to facilitate and increase productivity of people.  Productivity can be measured a number of ways based on what your job is right?

So, what I’ve been thinking about is – how are social media and internet tools making us more productive and getting business done.  How are we selecting the tools we decided to use for business?  How could you and I take the advice Nick gave and apply it to Social Media Marketing?

This is a question that I think should be discussed in collaboration with others as it is a problem that I think many businesses are struggling with today.  How do you systemize the practice of social media?

Please share your thoughts as I would love to put together a collaborative document or “Best Practices” Starter-kit for Social Media or something to help businesses get over the change threshold.  I am going to start working on how to ‘Systemize’ my own Social Media practices and will report back later.

Last, thank you Nick for a great post – you really got me thinking and acting.

>>>> UPDATE:  I’m bringing the conversation that we had today on this topic today on Friend Feed <<<<

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About Jason Cronkhite

Entrepreneur, Fanatical Football Supporter, Husband & Father to two cute kids Kendall & Connor.
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  • http://www.victusspiritus.com/ Mark Essel

    Well posed and timely question Jason. Seeing anonymous links from people I have yet to converse with has very little impact.
    I can say with confidence what makes my interactions valuable in any social media environment. Responding to those who ask questions, offering information and assistance when and where I can, gives me a great start in developing trust with new folks. It also shows any community I'm involved in the type of member I am. Businesses will have to be represented by people that do the same, they respond and act as individuals, but in addition they represent the interests of their brand/business.

  • http://SocialMediaAndInteractiveMarketingBlog Jason Cronkhite

    I agree Mark and glad I asked the question. So you're saying it's a thing
    with leadership basically? If social media is not championed from the top
    it will be that much harder for a business to adapt before it can even
    consider systemizing process. I can certainly agree with that.

    Ok, but how practice SM on a weekly basis and what tools do you find have
    the best business cases? I realize the last part of that question could be
    more specific but I'm interested to see how you use SM for your business
    purposes.

    Cheers,
    Jason

  • http://byronnewmedia.com ByronNewMedia

    Jason thanks for kicking this one off. Have left a lengthy comment on Friendfeed. Following this one closely. Dean

  • http://www.victusspiritus.com/ Mark Essel

    Jason, in regards to your question “how do you practice SM on a weekly basis and what tools do you find have the best business cases/uses”: I check in to the SM I engage in between once every day and several times a day (email, twitter, friendfeed). After logging in I check for direct replies/messages. Then in twitter or friendfeed I'll look to my “superhumanfilter” list. This is a list of posters that I use for presenting me data that 85% of the time I find very interesting. If I have time I'll check my general streams for a few minutes to see what folks I'm following are sharing. I'll spend as much time as I can reading/browsing links and doing my best to leave comments on blogs,and replying/commenting to any posts I find valuable. This is going to be one challenge for a business that seeks involvement in Social Media, either spending the time themselves or hiring dedicated people to continually read/researching their niche/fields, consistently commenting/interacting with experts in that area, and do their best to be helpful and responsive to people that seek information in their domain.

  • http://www.victusspiritus.com/ Mark Essel

    As I was writing up a post for today, I came across some of my earlier articles that help answer this question with some additional information.

    Marketing is going to enable you to connect with your audience.
    http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/05/11/how-we…

    In addition social media will allow you to learn about the surface of the community you are forming.
    http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/04/24/how-to…

  • http://www.jasoncronkhite.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-makes-a-difference-in-business/ Can Social Media Really Make A Difference For Business? | Social Media and Interactive Marketing Blog

    [...] week I raised the question, “How do you systemize social media”?  In terms of process and daily practice, I was hoping to spark a  conversation to understand and [...]