I find it interesting, this world we live in.  I'm probably too entrenched in this Social Media, Recruiting space.  I get genuinely surprised when people either a) discover Social Media b) discover how to use it within Recruitment.  When people rock up at these conferences and are all starry eyed and "Wow'ed" at what they are discovering.  I know it is pretty cool stuff, which is why I like to go for these.  I too was once doe eyed listening at the foot of the wisdom tree sucking in as much as I could, and honestly... it changed my Recruiting life.  But that was many years ago now, Social Media was in its infancy, LinkedIn had less than a million people on it, Facebook was barely out of college, Twitter wasn't thought of yet and RecruitingBlogs.com only had a couple of thousand users.  I still remember the nerves of hitting "publish" on my first blog post (@AdamAxon I think you'd remember) and expecting the world to somehow stop (it didn't... I guess you knew that though huh?)

Why is Social media such a surprise for people now? 2 people join Linkedin every second they tell us.  Facebook has almost a billion people on it, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, Tumblr etc etc etc ad infinitum.   It's mainstream right? Not reserved as the pure domain of computer nerds and people who cannot connect with people in real life (we're all there still though).  Right?  By hitting "publish" on this post, I'm probably preaching to the converted, but I'm typing it anyways!

The great thing I love about Social Media, is the speed of its evolution.  This speed makes it OK to try things, if it doesn't work, fine, switch gears, mark down the lesson learned and go on to the next thing.  Failure doesn't always mean the apocalypse, just ask questions about Google Wave.  The world of Social Media will forgive you and let you move on (and probably forget about your little mistake pretty quickly.. oh look something shiny..... sorry what was I talking about?) 

Sometimes I think it's healthy to sit back and look at the world around you.  Realise that not everyone thinks the same way, (yes, even with all the reciprocal smoke blowing on some of these blog sites) and be prepared to talk people through what you do.  Are you sure you know/understand why you do things? Social Media is still scary for people, especially people in companies, it is a move away from what they have traditionally done, things that have been successful.  Change is tough, change is confronting, and sometimes, it's not always needed.  People need to understand why they are doing things, what's in it for them! Not just follow blindly.  You need to have a reason, a business imperative to join in to the conversation.  I really don't think having 3000 "Likers" or "followers" is a legitimate business goal, there I said it!

Find that reason, find that critical need, and the rest will happen.  It's our job (us old time players in this space), to educate, challenge and support.  I'm learning not to assume that people know this stuff, which is a challenge for me, even though I'm not a Digital Native myself.  If you or your company are struggling to take the leap, don't be scared, trust me (OK, I realise that was said by a Recruiter)... the water is fine.  You'll find and learn by doing! That's the best bit about Social Media's evolution, you keep learning and evolving with it.  It's a great ride, share it with people.