What Tools Do You Use?
What does social media enable you to do that you couldn’t do before?
The vast set of tools, instruments and philosophies that we’ve come to call “Social Media,” is undoubtedly having a vast impact on our culture. You may be surprised to hear but the United States is leading the way when in comes to social media. It’s counterintuitive to think, probably because we are in the middle of a dirty recession that doesn’t seem to want to end. Adding to that is the fact that we’ve basically lost an entire decade of job creation, prosperity and to a more cultural malaise.
We all feel like we are falling behind, perhaps never to regain that sense of optimism, hope and impenetrability that took us from the Post-War era into the new millennium.
Social Media is What Makes Us Strong Again
Our society is just catching up to the fact that social media is incredibly powerful. It’s power lies in its ability to fully activate the American people. History knows that just when you count America out, we come back with a ferociousness and sense of purpose that stuns the world and defies history.
So how does social media enable you?
- Communication: Social media is enabling us to communicate again without boundaries, slicing through the hierarchies that our 20th century economy was built on. Wanna tweet at the CEO of Pepsi? You can do that. Feel the need to criticize or praise a companies charitable givings? Write a blog post and share it with the world. You never know, you might just stir up a little trouble in company headquarters.
- Community: Chances are you’ve probably found a few native communities online using the tools of social media. You are more likely to find more. Social media enables us not just to find the communities we want to belong to, it allows us to participate in their growth and development, regardless of physical limits like geography, economics or access. A graphic designer in Portland can help a non-profit in NYC redesign their website.
- Friendship: How much more time are you spending with your friends? Maybe you are thinking that you are spending a lot LESS time with your friends. Or maybe you just need to reconsider the term friend. Is a friend someone we’ve never met, but who we interact with on a daily basis, who we share links and information with, who we are dying to meet one day if the other person would just jump on a plane.
- Business: Is your business online? Is it moving there? Have you met business contacts or closed deals online? I have and more and more I find myself skyping with people across the world. People have found me on Twitter and on my blog. It’s not much of a leap to go from reading and enjoying someone to reaching out to them and seeing what’s up.
- Personally: Social media is a liberating force. It’s liberated me from a number of things. My fear of writing daily. My fear of not having a support system. But more than anything it has liberated me from my fear of being myself. See, I am a quirky controversial guy. My politics are wrong. I have a wry sense of humor, sometimes its purple. I pick fights. I am sensitive. I can dish it but I can’t take it. But social media has given me the platform and the confidence to know that the more honest and authentic I am the more I will be appreciated. This is the exact opposite of the kind of conformity that defined our culture, which said, put your head down, work hard, don’t speak up, don’t rock the boat, play the politics and you’ll succeed. Yes you’ll succeed, except you’ll be succeeding in a place that you don’t want to succeed in.
How does social media enable you?
In what ways are you “activating” yourself, your business, your community or your personal relationships with social media? Would love to hear short answers in the comments section.
