I read an interesting blog post from Joanne Jacobs here, The trough of disillusionment for social media strategies, and it made me think how much knowledge older people have to share.
Rory Cellan-Jones made some interesting points in his post here, Facebook – back to the kids? in 2008, that for people over 25 might aswell not bother with the likes of Facebook as they are too old.
So can anyone be too old or too young to be teaching, coaching, consulting in Social Media?
What about the phrase “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”?
Well, in my work i have seen a shift of change in attitudes about employing my skills. Why is this?
From my observations, a number of companies and agencies have been employing Social Media “Gurus” with little commercial experience.
Building Social Media platforms, blogging and using YouTube, Facebook and Twitter makes you no more a social media specialist as building cars does not make you a Formula 1 champion racing driver.
This may sound obvious and common sense, but so many people miss the point or avoid it.
Now in your business, you may be happy dabbling and playing with Social Media as you may not think there is any value in employing a specialist. That’s fine. However, if you want to take Social Media seriously and are seriously looking at ways at making best and effective use of it, read on.
The have been a number of commercial examples where the company has employed someone based on cost only for them to contact me after a few weeks with the statement of “we need your help”. My response is why, as they have Facebook fan pages, Twitter, Youtube etc etc.
Creating these is one thing, but linking them all and having most effective use is another. The Facebook fan page for one client was very quiet with a couple of 100 members. Within one week of my work it went into the thousands and became a great success engaging with many individuals and organisations.
Here are some of the scenarios that have been adopted by some over the past 12 to 18 months with Social Media;
- Tried using it themselves and teaching themselves as they go along, maybe read a book or two on the topic
- Brought in a “whizz-kid” in on a student placement
- Asked their friend/family/colleague to teach them
Sadly most of these result in a lot of frustration, wasted money and time and some organisations with disastrous effects
As i now approach my 50th year – yes i know, i don’t look my age, but then who does? – i was thinking of running some seminars to teach some of the basic skills for Social Media that will save people time, money and avoid disasters!
Which neatly comes to my concluding statement, which is what my blog post title is, you can now call me “An old dog teaching new tricks!”
What do you think?