Social Media is taught in Elementary School. February 4, 2010
A post was recently published on Mashable entitled “4 Essential Traits for Social Media Success in Your Career”.
The Four Essential Traits:
- Develop real relationships.
- Keep tabs on what’s popular, catch trends early.
- Try new things.
- Give back to the community, support others, promote the work of groups aside from yours.
The blog comments are filled with praise, as if these four traits are something new and innovative, and I can’t figure out why.
This is the same stuff we learned when we were in elementary school (or grammar school or grade school, depending on where you are):
- Become friends with lots of people.
- Stay in tune with fads (eg., Transformers, Pogs, Crazy Bones, Beanie Babies, Pokémon).
- You can make new friends by getting involved in new activities and meeting new people.
- Volunteering your time to extra-curricular groups and school organizations created new opportunities for making friends.
Sound familiar?
When we are young, we’re always trying to make new friends. In business, we’re still trying to make friends, but for different reasons.
Social Media is just a means to an end. It’s just a way to make new friends.
The technology and tools may have changed, but the “essential traits” have remained the same.
There’s nothing new to it. We’ve been doing it since we were kids.
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