Consciously Networking Part 2

Social Media

Social Media has modified the way we communicate with each other in such a dramatic manner and it has actually revolutionized communication.

Previously, if I wanted to invite my family to my son’s wedding, I would have to spend a couple of months just getting everyone’s addresses, then a couple of days writing out the invites and then, spend a couple of months following up and making sure that I got my RSVP’s back in time so that I could confirm the number of guests attending.

Now, I could get onto Facebook, create a 200 word invite, invite all my guests and wait for them to get back to me, sending out a couple of reminders from time to time. The whole process would take me a few hours and the follow up a couple of minutes. I can send the invites 3 to 6 months before hand and final confirmations could be done two weeks prior to the wedding day. No matter where my family and friends are in the world, they would all get the invites at the same time and inform those that are not on FB.

I could begin building my own online album through Kodak online or Shutterfly and as my son leaves for his honeymoon, the whole world would have the video-clips of the wedding on You-Tube to watch immediately, in fact my family in the UK, France and Jamaica could participate in the wedding live, if we set up a webinar or a skype session☺.

With a simple click, I can then Tweet it and make sure that my blogs, personal and or business website is updated and Voila! Instant marriage, souvenirs and albums created all at once for the whole world to see.

The scenario that I have just projected is the reality of the changes that have happened so fast in the world of communications (though I am sure my son would be extremely unhappy if I did organize his wedding that way!). With a little Blackberry phone, I don’t even need to be anywhere close to my laptop or telephone line in order to share my world with you in an instant.

What are your thoughts on these changes? Do you like them, or do want to go back to the good old days? Well… actually, does it really matter if you do like it or not? I’d say yes! Best make friends with all this new technological stuff, because your kids use it, whether you want them to or not and it is far better to be conscious of what can and cannot be done using a communication platform such as MXIT, rather make the assumption that it must be this or it must be that only to find out later what your child has been up to with someone possibly halfway across the world.

By you choosing how to make the social media platforms work for you, you enter a world, where you are the owner and creator of your brand and your image. Understanding, how they work and to what great uses they can be used for, will make them your best friends, so you would be using MXIT to communicate with your kids when they were away from home instead of seeing it as something that has a mind of it’s own that can do all kinds of weird stuff! (Mmmmhhhh… sometimes I really wonder, when people blame objects for causing mischief!)

Social media has brought a change to the way we communicate in much the same way that the automobile changed the way we traveled. They both made people more accessible at a faster rate and allowed us to reach places that otherwise would have taken us so much longer to get to.

So what’s the next step. Since we can’t get rid of it, what do we do with it?

Have you decided to ignore it and be like those who pooh-poohed the noisy smelly automobile, and who were so sure that no-one in his right mind would every been seen dead in one of “dem darn contraptions”?

Or are you trying to figure out, how anyone can even get through all that information?

Maybe you are already using it in a positive, constructive manner to support your business or just to connect to friends around the world.

Please share how you are Consciously networking and how that is impacting on your life today.

Joan Laine
Transformational Life & Business Coach
Follow me on Twitter