I was watching the Desperate Housewives finale earlier this week and there was this absolutely hilarious exchange between Tom and Lynette about Twitter. For the two people out there who don’t watch the show, Tom and Lynette are a middle-aged, married couple who are both working to get back into the advertising industry after taking a prolonged hiatus to raise their children. In this scene, Tom is telling his wife about a recent job interview, and she asked him how it went.
T: Ok, until the 30 year old interviewing me asked if I’d ever used twittering as a part of a marketing campaign.
L: What’d you say?
T: Nothing. Because I don’t know what twittering is.
L: It’s a social networking tool where you send instant updates to anyone who signs up for them.
T: So you knew about this? And you kept it from me?
L: I didn’t keep it from you. It’s just one of those tech things that you don’t care about. It’s for young people…
You can watch a clip of the scene here. I’m not middle-aged or in advertising and I know what Twitter is. But I can also totally relate to Tom’s character. I have accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. I have a blog. I’m apparently, pretty connected to the online world. But, like Tom, Twitter is one of those tech things I don’t actually really care a whole lot about. Gasp. I said it. Don’t judge yet. Let me explain.
I understand that social media is both a big buzzword and a big deal these days. I know that there are many of my colleagues out there who work with social media-related things as a part of their careers on a daily basis. I know that it’s relevant for a lot of industries. For me, the draw just isn’t there. Why? Because I work for a company where the firewall blocks out every type of website that might possibly have considered being linked to something even remotely social. My point? Social media isn’t valued at my company. I’m not going to go to a staff meeting one day and hear my boss talking about Twitter and how it’s helping with x, y, or z initiative.
Given the type of company I work for, the nature of our business, and the type of clients we serve, having a Twitter feed or Facebook page isn’t going to help us sell work. We’re far more old school, so to speak. And I struggle with that a little because part of me, no matter how much I love my job, wishes that I could have a role that would enable me to learn and embrace new technologies in different ways on a professional, rather than personal, level. You know… a role where things like Twitter were more professionally relevant to me.
I’m in this predicament because, while I’d like to learn more and see how I can make it applicable in some professional aspect of my life (like for this STC chapter), I don’t have hours and hours to spend on research and I just don’t know where to begin. A lot of results displayed when you google “social media” look cagey, and about 90% of them are blocked by my company’s firewall.
So I did the next logical thing I could think of to seek help: I began to reach out to my socio-professional network to see if someone out there had a few minutes to give me a little direction. I emailed my friend Lindsey, a fellow writer and STC member for help. She has a social media blog and I figured she’d be the best resource on where to go for the basics. I asked her for some suggestions for introductory material on social media, and she posted her response to my email on the blog. You can read her response here.
The information in her response surprised me because I learned that I knew more than I thought I did. That was comforting. Maybe my capacity for learning and applying new trends hasn’t totally fallen by the wayside. And, somewhere along the way, it dawned on me. The beautiful thing about an organization like STC – and networking in general – is that when I have a situation like this, where I want to learn more, but don’t have the opportunity to do so in my job, I have an entire network of colleagues to call on for help.
And, even more importantly, with my role on the chapter advisory board I have the perfect venue to explore some of the professional aspects of social media. I hadn’t even thought of that until I began to write this post. The chapter’s goal over the summer and next year is to work on our website and ways to make this community more online-based and applicable to the needs of local writers. Social media ties right in.
In my old school world, STC is giving me an opportunity to explore some of these trends in a semi-professional way. Now, I just need a social media mentor. Any volunteers?
