Are We Really Just “Students”?

When I was in corporate America, I didn’t take on a new skill – say, direct mail fundraising – and say I was a “student” of fundraising. I was learning, but I was a professional. I was a professional honing a new skill, which – if we’re doing it right – we’re doing all the time. Yes?

So, I’m a bit over the notion that we’re all “students” of social media. Are the tools new? Yes they are. But communication and building relationships with people and the idea of providing value in return for someone’s attention are the oldest concepts in the book. Are we all so new at that? And if we are, should we be proud of that?

So if you want to say you’re still learning how to navigate the tech, that’s great with me. If you’re still learning how the tech applies to your business, I can be cool with that too. Because there are plenty of tools at which I’m not a pro. For instance, I’m a novice at video and podcasting. But I can still articulate their value, even if I’m not a producer.  (I have lots of people I can call that know the ins and outs of that better than I do, and that’s just fine.) But that’s the nuts and bolts.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been in communications for years (over a decade, to be exact), of varying stripes. I’ve been in fundraising, client services, business development, and marketing. I am a professional, and I carry with me certain expertise. I am NOT a novice at social media strategies because, while we’re still monkeying around with how social integrates with traditional and which tech is best for what purpose, I  have been employing the ideas of good business relationships for my entire career. I’m just adding new tools to my arsenal that help me do all of those things even better, more quickly, and with exponential power.

Am I still learning about what makes a community strong? Yes and no. Some of it is revisiting old ideas and stripping away the BS. Some of it is just figuring out the implications of information overload, preferences in technology, the flattening of information and the more prevalent voice of the customer. Some of it indeed is understanding the behaviors of folks who are more heavily invested online than ever before. But I’m not new to the idea of community. Just the execution of it in a new environment.

Business people all over the place will tell you that of course relationships matter. Of course they see the value in getting to know people personally, establishing trust, finding ways to brand loyalty and customer retention. Business people worth their salt will never argue the importance of these things. They don’t need to be sold on the idea that people matter (and if they do, social will never save them anyway, so you might as well focus elsewhere).

But they need the translation of how individual relationships scale (or how we can try), how to execute these ideas efficiently and within a budget and a larger business plan, and why these strategies will be more effective at doing all the things we mentioned above than the ones they’ve always done. They need transition plans that move them, methodically and realistically, in the right direction and don’t use “being part of the conversation” as justification for the shift. That requires work. Action. Execution. Effort. Proof. Not some lofty idea of sitting in the classroom of social media.

I feel like taking a sledgehammer to this fishbowl of ours. I have a project cooking that is ALL about execution – from culture change to internal communication to nitty-gritty tactics. Because that’s what business cares about. Because that’s what we need to legitimize social’s place among an enterprise structure. Because those are the only things that will actually affect the change that we are all so desperately clamoring for and claiming social is capable of.

I spend a lot of time – a lot of time – talking to companies and their employees.  They need to know that they can rely on people who have a solid foothold in the foundations of social media with the realities of business entrenched firmly in their minds along the way. We can learn the tools as we go. Hell, those change anyway. But we’re doing ourselves, our industry, and the business world a disservice if we all sit in wonder and awe of our role as “students” instead of looking at this as an evolution in our professional skill set – and tearing into it with practical, applicable gusto accordingly.

So can we stop excusing our ignorance and our learning curve by calling ourselves “students”? Please, yes, learn. But learn by doing. Business doesn’t need students. They need professionals actively honing new skills and putting them into practice. See the difference?

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