I've mentioned a few times before, but haven't written to much about, that I'm currently in school taking a post-grad program in PR and Corporate Communication. On top of this, I've recently taken it upon myself to also start learning about social media. I think that social media will continue to dominate technology for years to come, even more than it does now. I also think that being able to understand and adapt to social media will be an asset to anyone who deals with PR and/or Corporate Communications. Social media will become the way most people communicate both to and about companies and organizations. As well, companies will adapt to ways in which they can use forms of social media to promote community within.
I think that by learning as much as I can about social media I will be giving myself an edge next summer when my course is done and I begin the ever feared job hunt. The problem with my goal is that there is so much out there and I sometimes feel like I'm almost lost.
I read a lot of blogs to try and find out what's new and what's cool in the world of social media. One of my favorites is Mashable, as they are constantly looking for new social media products,services, sites, etc. and giving fairly good reviews of what they find (which sometimes include video's of the service they are showing). The problem with this method is that I never know which ones people will use and which ones are useless.
Now, I'm not completely new to the idea's of social media. I even consider myself to be the early adapter of such things with in my group of friends. I was one of the first people I knew to have a myspace (which I have since forgotten about). I had a facebook account before they opened it up to the general public and you needed a university email to sign up. Aside from the big FB though, I kind of lose my group of friends and am forced to try these things out myself.
One of the best features of social media is creating your own little community, but my community is little over one. Not to say that I don't have friends who use some forms of social media, but in most cases I find myself exploring them on my own.
For instance; I finally got myself a twitter account a few months ago, but when I did the initial "search for your email contacts" I came up with a list of three people and one of them was a person I emailed once I think to send a resume to. I've slowly started to build my list of twitter friends though by searching for terms in twitter like "Toronto PR" and such. Some people have been nice and have become people I speak with via twitter, but I would still say the contact is very minimal.
It's very hard to try and build a social media community when your community truly doesn't know you, or about you. However, I'm going to continue to push myself into more online communities so I can use the social web for it's full potential and learn as much as I can. So, if you ever get a request on a social community from a member named 40deuce, chances are it's me.
Also, if you are interested in getting to know me more via a social network, here's a few places you can find me:
(On a side note before I post my outro music, I had an idea while writing this post. What do you think about the idea of me starting a new blog that just deals with introducing, reviewing and learning about social media? It would be a process where I would learn but as well help other people learn about and use social media. Maybe I'd even invest in a domain name and everything. If anyone is actually reading this, let me know what you think either in a comment or email or any other way you find to get a hold me.)
