In this edition of Web Enlightenment we'll be talking about social media's 25th birthday, it is this year.

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Social Media's 25th Birthday

As many of you know I spent last week at the Mail Order Gardening Association conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This organization has been in existence since 1934 and of course my client Johnny's Selected Seeds is a member that encouraged me to join.

I had a really great time - but one of the presenters there really struck a chord with me. His name is Sundeep Kapur and he is known as the Email Yogi.

His presentation was on social media and to be frank I was not looking forward to it - I had not really reviewed his material beforehand and I assumed he was another social fad person, but we'll get to what that means in just a moment. Sundeep's presentation really reminded me of several conversations I had when presenting at Internet Retailer's conference this year.

Social Media is a problem for web gurus like me - and the basic problem is that most folks promoting and encouraging social media are full of crap. Do what they say and you'll waste a bunch of time and get zippo results. But then we have the Today Show talking about twitter multiple times per episode and so we can't just ignore it outright. I get so many questions on this issue it is a bit maddening sometimes.

As many of us discussed over beers at Internet Retailer I hope we see a schism in the way we talk about social media - there is a great divide between the fad folks and the ancients.

The fad folks are the morons who ignore facts, talk about "tweeting" like it is as important as going to the bathroom, and generally they are just a bit overexcited about social media. Folks like me really don't like these people, mostly because we remember that the web has a "fad" every few years and this same excitement cycle happens over and over. There is a lack of ethics among this set that is pretty offensive, most of the folks presenting on social at Internet Retailer fell firmly into this category. Anybody can make money for a year or so on the web as a "professional" , all they have to do is convince some poor sucker (or a lot of poor suckers if they want a sports car) to believe in what they are pitching. Making money over a span of many years; that is where the real skills lie.

But a new trend is emerging in the discussion of social media - it is time to acknowledge and respect the ancients. Sundeep is an ancient through and through, which means he gives great useful advice on social media that is wonderfully useful.

To help you understand this and to realize its importance to running your own social media efforts we have to take a brief trip back in time, to a mystical land that existed quarter century ago. The year was 1984 and I was actually just beginning my professional career, I was so proud of my members only jacket and my hair mousse. (for those of you doing the math yes I was indeed quite young then but I was also working for RSA - but that's another story of prodigy geekiness).

At that time we had very low speed modems and many of our encounters happened on BBS's - bulletin board systems that people ran on computers in their basements. We would all - gasp - dial in to these systems and have conversations with each other.

When you look at a web address this is what it looks like:
www.yourname.com

Have you ever wondered why we need that www out in front of every site name? At one time there were a bunch of competing formats on the internet (it was not the web yet) one of which was news. So you might visit a "site" that had an address like this:
news.yourname.com

Today that has gone away and pretty much every web resource is a www but it is important to know that many folks - me included - believe that the news was what made the Internet become so popular. Back in those long ago days we had things called newsgroups - threaded discussion forums where you could post a question on almost any issue and folks would answer back and so on. At that time the powerful idea that each person reading the news was also an equal publisher of the news was pretty amazing.

Today social media ancients want to talk about "conversations" and they focus on things that have been around for so long many folks don't consider them social media at all. They want to talk about blogs, or discussion forums, newsletters, or email conversations.

These ancients refer to concepts that are well proven and they give good solid advice that is about having conversations with your customers. They care about connecting with people and the exact technology used to do so is irrelevant.

And so with that in mind I realized that based on the ancients definition of social media I needed to get out my decorating tools and whip up a cake for Social Media - it turns 25 years old this year. A happy birthday indeed.

As an Internet Entrepreneur you need to be aware of social media, and you do need to do something about it - but I would suggest you follow the guidance of ancients. Those are the folks that talk about the power of people to connect with each other, that will use any tool and know that the people are what matters and not the technology.

if you let the ancient wisdom of communicating over the internet be your guide when it comes to social media you'll have lots of success indeed.

Welcome to New England Outdoor Center

I'd like to welcome the New England Outdoor Center to The Internet Educator family of clients, I'll be doing the web strategy plan for them over the course of the next month or so. NEOC has been Maine's ultimate adventure resort for over 25 years now, you can check them out on the web here.