Books, Blogs, and Beyond

The "i" is little, but It's Essential to ROi from Social Media

By Tom Collins

I keep wondering if we'll ever get to the point where social media will be understood as a communication tool. Will people who "demand" an ROI analysis for their business to use social media get strange "how-long-have-you-been-off-planet" looks from everyone, just like they would if they said it about having a phone or an email address for your business?

But I digress. Go read the Forbes article, Yes, I'm a CEO Who Really Uses Twitter, by Communispace CEO Diane Hessan. Read it again. Print it out and pass it around.

It's full of lessons for how to get started in social media. Don't think of it just as a Twitter piece. Much of it applies to any social/business networking endeavor — even offline.

My ROi point here relates to the one investment that must be made in any business use of social media: time and attention. Small, but essential.

Here's a taste of what Diane says she — and her company — got out of her first six months using Twitter:

Can Data Be Cool? Only When Filtered Through a Brain

By Tom Collins

Got linked to Tim Berners-Lee's talk at TED this morning. His current big idea relates to getting the world's data online, accessible, and usable, i.e., linked.

The data itself is, IMHO, kind of useless stuff. The individual bits rarely mean what we think they mean, until we connect them and put some thought into what we've collected. But oh, what we could do with all that data, linked ...

Sidenote: My link came via the KMgov email list. I watched the video and then shared the link on Twitter. Now I'm sharing it again here.

A couple of years ago, Kevin Kelly asserted that the hyperlink was one of the two most important inventions in the last 50 years (the other being tags). Links may turn out to be the most important ever. Think about that, your social networks, and the trail that led us here, as you watch and learn:

Books, Blogs, and Beyond ... Publishing 3.0 ...

What's that all about?

Well, that's what we're going to explore in this blog, pulling together threads from our earlier separate blogs. From 140 characters on Twitter to 300 page hardcover books ... a blog as your social media base camp ... a book as your business brochure ... what does "publishing" mean in our continually evolving digital world?