Just How Social Is Social Media

Social media is so much a part of life today it is hard to imagine life without it. Just try finding a family that is not using social media in some way. It makes me wonder though, just how social is social media?

I mean think about it. How has the use of social media affected how you communicate? In this article we will discuss how social media has changed the ways that we interact for business and personal relationships.

Let’s look at business first. Think way back to the times before social media. Yeah, like ten years ago right? So back in that stone age time, how did we communicate? Well I can remember. We used phones, faxes, mail and some email. Most of the things that we worked with were yet not digitized, so we depended on mail and fax to send most things back and forth. If you were in a hurry you could always go for overnight, but that was tough on the budget.

There was more than one occasion that business deals were scheduled around how long it would take to shuffle the documents back and forth through the mail. Of course, those were also the days that when you stepped out of the office you were pretty well disconnected until you either called in it got back to the office. Remember all the pink phone message slips that would be waiting on your return?

Oh yeah, remember networking events? That was like the only way you extended your network. Back then we kept our contacts in a rolodex file. It was great because you could take it with you! Don’t laugh too hard.

How about personal relationships? You know, phone calls and letters. Back then you had to wait until the evening to make your long distance calls. We would dial in like two hundred numbers for our access code, and then get the “all lines busy” message. So after three or four tries you might finally get through. Just don’t talk too long, or you’ll have to wait until next month to have minutes for calling again.

Okay, if your sides aren’t hurting too bad we will continue. It really is amazing how technology and social media have changed how we communicate, but in what ways are things better?

We can communicate must faster for sure. That’s mostly good, but it most assuredly diminishes the anticipation.

We can communicate more frequently and more freely. There is good and bad in there. Aside from communication overload, we have entered into an era where far too much is shared without thinking. Personal relationships suffer from this aspect of communication in my opinion.

We can engage with a much larger audience. Whether business or personal, it is a good thing to be able to send a message to ask of your connections immediately.

Overall I think that social media brings good tools into our life. The challenge, like with any tool, is will it be used for good or not. The biggest wish that I see is that we become too casual in our communication. So mix it up. Don’t just send a tweet or Facebook comment, pick up the phone and call once in a while. Better yet, write a letter and mail it. Don’t worry, you can keep spellcheck handy if you need to.