Project Social

This is a tale of two men; two men with fiery passion. Let me introduce Ben Eubanks and Victorio Milian. These two men are going to change the world.

In the meantime, they want to make sure that anyone who wants to learn more about new media will have an opportunity to do so. Conversely, they want to make sure that anyone who wants to help enlighten the world about new media has a willing and receptive audience; Saturday October 9, 2010 was rollout day for their new endeavor called Project Social.

Have a look and see what the team of Ben and Victorio is up to. Get involved in this and help.

Giving Social Media the Business

For a time now I have been hanging out with the “cool kids” on the internet, on twitter and at some conferences I have been fortunate enough to attend. While, it has seemed to me that the whole world of Human Resources is involved in this scene, this has turned out to be is a very naive assumption of mine.  In fact if you look into the blogosphere   you can hear our peers lamenting the lack of involvement of HR professionals. 

From the tweet stream of the HR Technology Conference, I read that a very small percentage (3% - 5%) of social media users were content generators. So by default 95% of the users are only consumers of content. Given that statistic we have a lot of work in front of us, to grow the contributors of social media. So I have wondered how the “cool kids” can do this.

One thing that I have contemplated doing at my work is creating a single-purpose blog site that is directed to our customers and our industry.  This got me to wondering about the cool kids of HR, as business partners.  Are we living in a vacuum?  The question is this; are you taking your social media skills and abilities and applying them in your industry or discipline.

While there seems to be a number of HR bloggers and social media gurus who are coming from the staffing and consulting areas of HR, there are folks who come from not-for-profits, medicine, government, academia as well as other sectors of the economy.

In an effort to create somewhat of a dialogue, I ask the question, do you take your social media skills to your core business?  Are you an advocate for social media use and tools outside the HR arena?  If you are not doing this you should. This is one thing we can collectively do to help advance our cause and use of social media as a business tool.

Please leave a comment or a link that showcases some of your social media prowess outside the HR area.  Hopefully this will be a catalyst to spur others to do the same.

-Dave Ryan IL SHRM Director of Socail Media