Social Networking: what’s written on IT’s Facebook wall
February 20th, 2008 by Hugh Kennedy
A recent Network World survey supports what PJA’s second wave of original research with ITtoolbox showed late last year: IT professionals are increasingly taking up the tools of social networking – LinkedIn, MySpace, Digg, Stumbleupon, Facebook, etc. – and using them for business purposes. According to the new survey, nearly half of IT professionals use social networking for business. As the Forrester analyst put it, “We don’t really go to Toastmasters anymore.”
As available content becomes richer, especially on YouTube, I think we’ll see an even sharper rise in the number of business users making the site a go-to destination. MySpace activity may be dropping, as the recent BusinessWeek article “Generation MySpace is Getting Fed Up” pointed out, but that drop seems pretty closely linked to boredom with static profile pages and annoyance with ads. Which is precisely the point about why IT and life science audiences are using social media more these days: Content, not ads. Information, not self-promotion. YouTube remains a terrific way to get any technical content out to the world without the need for AAA production values. Anyone who has been sent the link for a live demo of root canal surgery knows the sky is the limit with sharing (maybe that should be over-sharing) and education using video online.
In our BtoB world, several of our clients are considering programs that are less focused on messaging themselves and more focused on a point of view about content – content that relates to their technology in action or to the larger lifestyle interests of their customers – so it’s no surprise that appreciation of these channels continues to grow as people discover their ease of use.
February 20th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Let’s not miss the point of social media. It’s not all about content. The core of it revolves around building relationships and being part of a community. The content may or may not follow.
There seems to be this prevailing notion from traditional advertisers that social media is simply another channel into which they can drop content, click “share” and expect the magic to happen. You can’t expect that social media will work that way.
So it’s encouraging that IT professionals are using these sites for business (and I assume that it means they’re connecting with other professionals). By continuing to be part of these digital communities, they’ll show their commitment to the conversation, and any content-sharing that comes out of it will seem natural, rather than a brand dropping in and making itself unwelcome.