World of Mouth: On Board The Social Media Revolution
Last month, I was scanning my Twitter feeds -- a daily and sometimes even hourly routine -- and stumbled on a video on YouTube titled, "Social Media Revolution."
I watched it and got chills. While many see this new kid on the block as simply a fad that gets used and abused by many who claim to be self-proclaimed experts or consultants in this newly titled field, social media isn't disappearing anytime soon.
Let's admit it: We Twitter and Facebook-holics do get made fun of on occasion for being overly connected. We're those people at lunch who say, "I need to update my status" or "OMG that's so funny, I so need to tweet that line." Or perhaps we're those types who are walking alone on the street and are suddenly inspired to snap that picture of a wacky poster, and send it out instantly to our community. It's not necessarily strategic or overly thought out; that's just what we do.
After watching this video, I thought to myself that this encapsulates what I try to express to my family and people who just don't get what's going on in this space and don't see the importance of jumping on the bandwagon. Check out it out for yourself:
I was so pumped up (in a good way) by this video that I reached out to its creator, Erik Qualman. The video happened to be a promotion for his book, Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms The Way We Live And Do Business. The book also seems to have struck a chord with the community and curious bystanders, making Amazon's best selling list after three weeks in publication. I got to chat with him via Skype about the book, video and what he predicts for the future of social media.
There's social media lingo too! Erik was nice enough to contribute his favorite buzzwords to us. Use them in conversation -- either you'll look like a complete geek, or you'll seem to be far ahead of the curve. Sooner or later, some of these terms might just catch on through word of mouth anyway.
Socialnomics: The ability of social media to generate exponential returns for individuals and businesses.
World of Mouth: Social Media enables Word of Mouth to go global
Braggadocian Behavior: People changing their offline behavior to do something cool so they can post or tweet about it.
Preventative Behavior: How to get hired and avoid being fired in the transparent social media world
Multiple Individual Redundancy (MDR): As a result in the ease in which information is disseminated, it helps mitigate individuals repeating the same tasks as others. Example: If 20 people in my social network say that X hotel is the place to stay in Aruba than I don't have to perform that tedious research prior to my trip.
Social Schizophrenia: In the past we could have multiple personalities. Since we now need to live our lives as if our mother is watching or what happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, you can no longer be Peter Perfect at work and Peter the Party Animal on the weekends.