This was a presentation by Darcy Knapp on, of course, social media. There were a few things she said that I disagreed with:
1. I don’t believe it’s a good idea to just create a profile on every social network you can find. First, maintaining your profile on that many sites is extremely hard. Second, if you don’t plan on connecting with people on those sites (such as Twitter), then you’re not going to benefit from them.
2. No, IM was not “sci-fi” ten years ago. In fact, ICQ (one of the first widely-used IM services) started fourteen years ago. I used it back in ’96, myself.
3. Related to #1, I don’t believe it helps your brand to create a profile on MySpace. In fact, I believe it hurts your brand to associate with MySpace, especially since it’s essentially losing market share anyway.
Besides those points though, I did like her push to get people to just go out there and jump in with social media, because I believe that’s the biggest stumbling block to people getting their businesses connected with others via social media – fear. Just do it!
