a co-worker of mine wrote a blog post recently about the “social media wave” and how it’s easy to be caught up in this tsunami of facebooks, myspaces, twitters, and more. with all the social media sites and services out there, in order to keep your head above the water you must have a strategy; you need to understand social media — not just use it.

i mention tracy’s post because of the discussion that it caused in her comments section. people see social media services as time-wasters. many corporations (including the united states’ military, though some restrictions have been relaxed) have even denied access on their networks to certain social media sites. unfortunately, it is a commonly held belief that these services cause more harm than good.

but do they really?

one of the questions asked in my conversation with someone was, “how does blogging help a plumber fix a leak? or how does twitter help an accountant balance the books?” i thought this question showed a great deal of ignorance about what social media is for, and what it does. i’ll take these two examples and explain further…

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