Social Media Discussion - Ground Level

I will now prove to you that anyone can be a social media consultant. I will take you inside a social media conference that occurred recently.

Here's an email from my sister to my Dad and me:

I've had a few people ask me to join their Facebook or Linked In pages, and perhaps I'm a techno-boob, but I still can't quite "get" the value of signing on to one of these things. Why not just send an email to all your friends if you want to update them? Do you have any insights?

Here's my quick, blunt and not-very-helpful response:

That's a raging debate. I am on both of them, but I wish I weren't. As far as I'm concerned, life is much easier not being updated on the goings-on of people I knew in 8th grade (That's Facebook) Linked-In users will tell you it's a valuable networking utility, which is a bunch of crap.

Then we get a reasoned and thought-out answer to my sister's query from my Dad:

I'm also on both (and a few others of similar ilk). [name redacted] asked me to join Linkedin. His reason was that it provided a business-related networking capability, and he was, I think, out of a job at the time and trying to find one. He wanted to use me as a reference on that service, but as far as I know nothing ever came of it. I personally have no use for it. I suppose it could be a valuable "networking" tool if it were actually used for the purpose that it supposedly exists. But I have no idea if it's effective.

Facebook, and all those other social networking sites have some value I suppose. For example, [another daughter] uses Facebook to post pictures for all of us to see, rather than send them in separate mails/messages which she says costs her (I suppose she's talking about using her phone camera.) Of course there are other ways to share photos online. I've only joined this and others because one of the family (usually grandkids) have asked me to. Again, I personally have no particular use for them, and generally avoid using them. They've had their own security problems.

Bottom line is that I generally avoid using them. But it's obvious to me that some find them addictive. Thinking about the work you're involved in now, I suspect you've got business associates that use them. Seems like every member of Congress thinks they need to Twitter. As do many celebrities. A lot of them are on Facebook. Ways to get noticed, keep up the celebrity, and supposedly stay in contact with the common man. If an important client is using one and wants to deal with you through it, then I guess that's an incentive.

And he fired off that reply jacked up on painkillers the day after partial knee replacement surgery. If he used Facebook more often (or Twitter) he might've just updated the occasional "Recovering from knee surgery" or "Love these pain killers" or "On couch after knee surgery," but I've seen no such updates from him. He's kickin' it old school, using that email thang. And sometimes - get this - the phone! I think I'm glad my Dad doesn't use Facebook that much.