Keith Shirley

We had the first meeting of the IIA Social Media Working Group on Wednesday night. Even though I left at 16:00 I still managed to arrive late. Thankfully I received no dirty looks when I arrived. I’d much prefer to be able to take the train but with the increasing number of unannounced strikes I don’t fancy the risk. On a positive side however – it makes me very glad I don’t work in Dublin and have to drive there every day. Anyway – back to the meeting.

It was interesting to compare this meeting to working groups in the Telecoms sector. I know the remit of the group is not to formulate a new standard but the atmosphere was very positive. Why do I mention new standard? In the telecoms world it was often quite difficult to filter out which suggestions were being made to push a standard in the direction of one parties plans and which were genuinely meant as useful comments. For the IIA working group I got no impression if this, which is very refreshing.

The exact details of what the group will focus on is going to take a little time to solidify. The whole area of Social Media is so big that it could quickly become a quagmire. There is a good mix of people in the group from various backgrounds which should help keep it balanced. Possibly I would have liked there to be more “non-traditional” tech users there but there has to be a limit on the size. There is a very healthy attitide within the group to sharing information and trying to release drafts to the public for comment at an early stage.

One topic that keeps coming back to me were the comments about the fear factor sometimes associated with this area. It was only a tiny part of the meeting but it really stuck with me. The worrying part is that it’s a fear of “attack” (my words – not the group members) by members of the blogging community rather than a general PR issue with customers. The point being that if a business makes a mistake with the way they try to get invloved in Social Media it can turn into a mini disaster because some fanatic has taken exception to it.

This is something that really pisses me off. I’ve seen it so often in the tech area where some arrogant guru decides that everyone must follow a specific set of rules and God forbid that they step out of line. Yes – I get annoyed when someone sends me a spam mail BUT as long as it’s not with intentional bad manners I don’t get too worked up about it. If I end up receiving new product announcements and I didn’t ask for them – big deal. Oh – and I get 1000′s of spam messages a day to my domains so I could have a “right” to be annoyed. I also don’t get so upset if someone forgets to use BCC when sending out a mail to a group of people. I try to calmly take the time to educate them and help them improve. Damien Mulley has recently made an offer on his Blog to open source his training materials on how to do Business Blogging. I think this is a great idea – and unfortunately I was too late replying to be able to take part. I know at least one member of the Working Group will be there however so I have no doubt he will have a very positive influence of the output of the group.

At this stage I’d like to confirm that the group is really pushing to get everyone with an interest in Social Media involved at an early stage. The drafts will be made available for review an comment as soon as they are in a half decent state (again – my words) – we won’t be publishing a definitive guide and saying take it or leave it. It really is a great opportunity for bloggers etc to make some comments without the time commitment that actively taking part in the working group involves.

A blog report of the first meeting of the Social Media WG is available on the IIA website.

Krishna De comments on her blog about the reticence of connecting with bloggers.

Bernie Goldbach calls us Social Media Plumbers, which I though was a very interesting term. Personally I’m certainly trying to figure out the best (or just good if there is no best) way of putting techniques and technologies together to get Social Media “flowing” within a business.

Image via Wikipedia

I’ll be going to the first meeting of the IIA Social Media Working Group next week. To quote their website -The Social Media Working Group seeks to support businesses in the development of strategies for engaging with social media, including blogging, social networking, community sites, RSS, tagging, and podcasts.

I’ve always been facinated with how technology can best be applied to business – especially a small business. It’s often tricky to know which technologies are going to prove useful and which ones are a fad. I’m lucky in the sense that it’s “ok” for me to experiment with different tools and technologies as I get paid to pass on what I learn.

The small business owner generally can’t afford to spend much time experimenting. During the startup phase it can seem impossible for a new business owner to manage to get everything done. Social media can be really helpful at this stage – not only does it provide a mechanism for people to get their name publicised but it can provide a great support community during what is often a very lonely time.

Of course the other side of the coin are the costs to a business when people spend hours on social media sites.

The output from the working group will be available to the public and now is your chance to influence proceedings:

- Do you have any comments on how and why you use or don’t use social media?

- Do you have any success stories or failure stories? A wise man (or woman) can learn from the mistakes of others. I’m personally especially interested in comments from “non-techie” businesses.

- What kind of results would you like to see the group produce?

Feel free to leave comments on the blog directly or email me at K.Shirley@Shercom.com

Keith