Forgive the dramatic headline, but I feel I've had a personal 'euraka moment'.

We're hurtling towards 2010, obsessed by social media, social networks, social software etc.  Blogs, Facebook and Twitter are now mainstays of everyday life - I can hardly book a hotel, go to the shops or buy a car without being invited to friend up or follow one business or the other.  Many business are hiring online community managers, the US has it's first online President, even Gordon Brown has attempted to use 'the YouTube'.

Like it or not 'social media' is mainstream.  Except for one simple thing that I think we've all forgotten - it not social media, it's the web...

What on earth does that mean?  Well it's quite simple - I think we've all convinced ourselves we should see 'social media' as something novel, special, unusual even.  We shouldn't.  The fact is that social media is just one more strand of the web in 2009.  It has different properties sure, but just like RSS, search, websites, email, IM, directories, forums etc it's part of the web - the sum total of which is the largest and most effective communication tool ever built.

This may appear to be a rant against social media, but it really isn't.  Social media is not a fad, and just like all of the other bits of the web listed above, it's not going to go away.  I just want to make this point because in treating social media as kind of a holy grail we've mystified it, started to 'professionalize' it, and worst of all we frequently focus on it as a medium rather than the conversations it can enable.

Why is this important?  As I said, it's because the web is a communication tool and as online evangelists we should be focusing on helping organizations, businesses, politicians etc not to formulate 'social media strategies' but how to communicate using the web as a whole.

And effective communication is a two way process - it requires thinking and listening as well as speaking.  That's where we come back to good old fashioned communication planning; defining objectives, identifying audiences, selecting appropriate channels, delivering messages, listening and feeding back.  The methods stay the same, only the channels will differ.  This years hot tools are Twitter and Facebook, next years will be mobile augmented reality and location based social networks.

That's what I'm going to make my focus from now on; helping clients to use the web - the whole web - to communicate more effectively with their customers, their employees and their suppliers.

Any thoughts?

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I've been thinking about Twitter and customer service.  I know this idea has been knocking around the social media community for a while now, but this past couple of weeks I've really started to see evidence of Twitter taking off as a customer service tool - what's more it works great.

I recently read "Why Small is the New Big in Social Media Marketing", on the Career Renegade Blog.  It uses a highly plausible example (a small independent bike shop) to illustrate why small firms have the advantage over larger companies when it comes to using social media for marketing purposes.

So, if you’re a small business or solopreneur Career Renegade and you’ve been wondering about the value of this wacky thing called social media, fact is you’ve got a huge advantage over large corporations right now. You have the ability to actually convert time spent on social media into money in the bank. And, have a lot of fun doing it.

The article is a great read, I really recomend checking it out, and by coincidence after reading it I experienced first hand just how great customer service via Twitter can be...

Last Monday I ordered a shiny new HTC Hero from Devicewire, it was supposed to be delivered Tuesday so it was waiting for me when I came home in the evening. Unfortunately UPS made a mistake with the delivery - it hadn't shown up so like any disappointed geek I Tweeted:

Imagine how pleased I was when the next morning I saw this reply from @devicewire:

How nice of them.  I wasn't looking for them to reply, I wasn't asking for anything. I really appreciate how proactive they're being, monitoring Twitter for mentions and using it to try sort out issues. That short reply has guaranteed my repeat business.

Later on in the week I was thinking about signing up to a Grid Server (gs) account with Media Temple.  I'm probably going to go for one of their Hosting Card accounts, but I'm sure I'll want to upgrade it later on for something more substantial. Instead of calling or emailing them I sent them a @mention over Twitter:

And just a couple of hours later @mediatemple let me know:

These two episodes have been the most helpful, least painful customer service experiences I've had this year!  Both are a really powerful examples of  how social media can help companies to get closer and be more responsive to their customers.  This is the sweet spot of social media.

If your organisation is not doing or planning to do some sort of customer support activity through Twitter please tell me why not!

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I've long been a member of DOPPLR, the social network for travelers, and I'm a big fan of it's Social Atlas. Whenever I'm planning a trip it's one of the first websites I check. Its great for getting a community view of where I'm headed.
 
Today DOPPLR have released an iPhone App that puts the power of it's Social Atlas in your pocket - and it's genius!
 
The App makes it easy to find places to eat, stay or see nearby (using the iPhone's geo-location) or by searching for details of a particular city. Adding new places to the Social Atlas or making recomendations is also really easy. If anything it's actually more fun to use than the website version.
 
What a great, useful travel App, and released just in time for my summer holidays too!

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12 hours ago I would not have written this post... actually if you told me I'd be writing this six hours ago I'd have been skeptical.

I have not been a fan of the UK mobile operator Orange for quite a few years now.  Back when I was last a customer they had some decent-ish handsets for the time (remember the Orange SPV range?) but they were expensive, they seemed slow to roll out their 3G network, and their data plans were downright confusing.  Over time the Orange device strategy just seemed to disappear of a cliff - I couldn't tell you the last time they had a decent handset to sell, they just didn't seem to be in the game.  To summarize; they're not the kind of a network a mobile geek like me would chose.

But right now, this evening, I've decided I'm prepared to give them a chance.  I'm at least going to listen to what they have to say and take a look at what they're doing.  And no.. this isn't because they've got the new HTC Hero to sell, it's because of how they've embraced the web as a channel for communicating with me and others out there like me.

Sometime after today's HTC Hero announcement I saw this great video by @conorfromorange pop up in one of my RSS feeds.  The highest complement I can give is that it's so good at first I didn't clock on that it was official - even though Conor clearly says so in his introduction.

Later on in the afternoon I did a quick Twitter search to see if there was any news on a UK release date for the Hero; I saw this Tweet which I quickly realised was from Orange's official Twitter feed.  This linked me onto to Orange's really pretty good 'The Feed' blog which is nicely written, informative and actually useful to a mobile obsessive type like me.  Obviously I subscribed to it straight away.

What Orange have done makes me think of something a friend who works for Yahoo! once said to me about social media; "there's really no secret to building online relationships - its actually the same as any other.  It has to be two way, you have to be genuine and you have to be prepared to give something to it."  You can see those qualities clearly in what Orange are doing.  

This is the power of good social media.  It's not just that Orange have got something to say, because after all most companies do, it's that the way they are delivering their message is credible, useful and apparently genuine.

And as I say it's got me prepared to take Orange seriously as a mobile operator once again...

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