No one is all that crazy about the term “social media.”
I like “social Web.”
It’s a new world, so no one can really disagree.
(This is how I’m participating in the 25 Words of Social Media Wisdom Writing Project on one of the best blogs in the business, Liz Strauss’ Successful Blog. You’re only a stranger once at her place.
Thanks, Liz.)
Welcome to Sheila Guides You To The Good Stuff, where we’ll be talking about using the social Web (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) for better travel, tourism and destination marketing and economic development.
This blog will be my new “home” for that topic, but right now it is a temporary placeholder for my WordPress.com blog of the same name.
I will move all of my other Sheila Guides…. content over here very soon, plus (I hope!) all of my RSS and email subscribers, too. This is a self-hosted blog on BlueHost, which means I pay for it but get more features and control than the WordPress.com blog, which is free but has some limitations.
I will need that control when I launch a new business in September, Tourism Currents, with Becky McCray.
Moving Day is planned for either Monday or Tuesday, July 13 or 14, with the help of my WordPress guru friend Jennifer Navarrete.
I expect some broken crockery, smooshed boxes and empty rolls of packing tape laying about, so please excuse the mess!
Thanks,
Sheila Scarborough (who guides you to the good stuff)
It’s hard to take something called “Twitter” seriously, I know, but the various cutesy-named social media tools and applications are not important in and of themselves.
It is what people are doing with them.
These are early days for Web connection technology, very much akin to the early days of the automobile. Sure, the first cars were loud, stupid and rather unreliable, compared to Ye Olde Horse.
Why bother, said most folks. Aren’t those silly new machines a ridiculous extravagance?
If, however, one looked beyond how to make the danged things work, and finding decent roads to drive them on, and locating places that sold gas, tires and parts, one could see the Big Picture….fast and affordable personal transportation across vast distances, anywhere, anytime.
That’s the social Web, too: human connection, anywhere and anytime.
Today I’m reading a John Sutter article on CNN.com about Steve Tucker, a farmer in Brandon, Nebraska who sends tweets from his tractor (I learned about the article on Twitter, of course.)
Who the hell cares, you ask? I care. Here is why, from the article:
“Tucker is proof that smartphones are starting to put down roots in rural America. He lives in a 150-person town near Brandon, Nebraska — a place even he calls ‘the middle of nowhere.’ The nearest neighbor to his 4,000-acre farm is about 2 miles away.
Yet, farmers like Tucker are using Internet-enabled phones to gain a foothold on online social networks — both for business and personal reasons. (Follow him on Twitter)
‘I can be in the most remote place and just with the power of having a BlackBerry … I can communicate with anybody at anytime about anything,’ he said. ‘It is just amazing.’
The growth of smartphones on farms is important because many people don’t think about where their food comes from, much less associate a specific farmer with that process, said Andy Kleinschmidt, a farmer and agricultural extension educator at Ohio State University.
‘When you can put a name or personality with someone who’s actually raising corn and soybeans or actually milking cows, that’s the most important thing that’s come about in my opinion,’ he said.”
We are watching our society knit itself together, making far-reaching human connections across timezones and cultures, in totally new and unexpected ways. I learned about Steve in Nebraska on the same day that I reconnected with a wonderful travel writer in Florida; I first heard Tom Swick speak at the best annual book festival anywhere, and now he’s figuring out what to do with Twitter, just like Steve on the tractor.
I would not miss this moment in history for anything, even if it does come laden with goofy names for the tools we are using to make that history.
I wanted to call your attention to my Aussie friend Des Walsh’s excellent post on why social media ignorance [is] not an option for business.
One of the post comments, from Carlos Hernandez, mentioned a moderator’s remark during the recent 140 Characters Conference (about Twitter) in New York.
While moderating a panel, Jeffrey Hayzlett, Kodak Chief Marketing Officer, noted that ROI (in addition to its usual “Return on Investment”) can also mean “Return on Ignoring” if a business or organization sticks its collective head in the sand about the fundamental changes wrought by the social Web.
Couldn’t agree more.
The connectivity of the Web and cellular technology, in the hands of humans who desire connection, is equivalent to the impact of the printing press in Western culture or movable type in East Asian culture. In fact, it has MORE impact because we can reach around the world with it almost instantly. The “Return on Ignoring” is finding that one’s business has been left behind.
Yet, the scoffs and laughter continue amongst those who will not see, unfortunately many of them around my age (I’m 48.)
I see it, though.
I see it even with bifocal contacts and gray hair. I’ve seen it ever since I wrote about network-centric warfare and Navy organizational structure.
I see the path and I’m heading down it with confidence, even if I have to leave a few folks wandering behind in the wilderness. They see a mirage called “the way it was,” but my feet are taking me along the path carved by “the way it is.”
Want to travel with me?
As soon as our gaggle settled in for the first meeting on the blogger’s tour in Hutchinson, Kansas, we started whipping out the laptops, cameras and other geek accoutrements.
That’s what those who are wired into the social web do – we start connecting immediately.
Bloggers are natural connectors, but we do it differently than some, and we use Web tools in ways that seem strange to the unplugged.
Sitting around the table, we introduced ourselves and ate box lunches while we yakked, tweeted and photographed everything.
At one point, I pulled this enormous cookie from my lunch and made some joke about it, and small business whiz Becky McCray pulled out her camera to take a photo.
You could sense that our Hutchinson hosts thought we were a bit silly, photographing everything, but I said, “Just you wait, this cookie can get around, and we’ll use it to talk about your town.”
Yes, it’s only a cookie. It’s a seemingly pointless photo; but, it will live on forever, and so will our words about Hutchinson, Kansas.
THAT’S why the Web is powerful as hell.
(Disclosure: My visit to Hutchinson was a press trip sponsored by the Cosmosphere and Hutchinson CVB, who paid for my lodging and expenses while I was in town. They did not tell me what I could or could not write about. I paid my own airfare to/from Kansas.)
