By Charlotte Kemp

So it turns out I am a Social Media Geek.

I always sort of suspected this, especially when people would ask me why I played with all the gadgets that I did and was on my computer all the time, but this time I realized it for myself.

We were in a Social Media Support training group, and I was presenting the first of a 5 part series on Social Media Essentials – introducing the various applications, giving my recommendations, explaining how they all work together and giving hints at how well they can be used to market one’s business or project.  Obviously in a room of people, there are different levels of experience with different applications like Facebook, Linked In, Twitter and even blogs.   A presenter has to explain, simultaneously, what the application is, what it can do, how it can be utilized and how it interacts with the other applications, all the while opening the path to later demonstrating how to specifically use if for marketing one’s business.

When we got to discussing blogs, one of the standard questions came up: where do you get material to write about?  At this point I demonstrated my utter enthusiasm with social media.  With a slightly unprofessional, yet gleeful air punch, I said “That is what Twitter is for, and Google Reader, and Google Alerts!”  And almost went on to present the next few week’s courses in concentrated form as I explained how to follow people in your industry to get ideas, and to generously share, with credit what they are writing about.

One of the slides I use in the training has the quote “Any tool, be it an axe or a search engine, will yield results that reflect the skill of the person wielding it.”  Well when it comes to social media, how we approach it reflects our level of skill, as well as our intention.  We can ‘hang out’ and chat to our friends.  We can use it to research and gather information and feel out a mood.  Or we can interact and attempt to influence opinion.

But when intention comes together with growing skill, the platform that social media offers is nothing short of powerful!  And that makes me very excited!