Recap of Williamette U MBA program First Thursday meetup & Michelle's social media maxims

Whether you’re ready for it or not, social media is changing the way people do business. That was more than apparent at Willamette University MBA program’s First Thursday lecture series last night where I talked about how companies are using social media.

A full house of close to 60 people packed the Living Room Theaters space to learn about LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media tools companies are using to do product research, reach out to customers and recruit employees. We shared lots of examples of how companies are putting social media into action, and what can happen when tools like Twitter get misused.

As promised, I’m providing some of the resources I used during our discussion. If you were at our meetup, thanks for coming – I’d love to continue our conversation on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you weren’t there, reading some of following will give you a taste of what we talked about.

Resources: I compiled a list of Websites and stories about how companies are using social media on Delicious, the social bookmarking service. To see them you need an account, which you can get by signing up here. Then do the following:

• Go to Network
• Go to Add a user to Network.
• Type in my user name, “michellerafter”. Click on my user name to see my bookmarks.
• Do a keyword search for “WillametteMBA” to see Websites I bookmarked especially for the First Thursday meetup. Happy reading.

Follow me: If you’d like to keep the conversation going, feel free to follow me on Twitter at @michellerafter. On LinkedIn, I’m Michelle Vranizan Rafter. Watch for my stories about social media in Workforce Management, an HR industry trade magazine; Inc.’s tech website, IncTechnology.com; and on two websites for consumers, YourSecurityResource.com and TheGeekWeekly.com.

Here are a few things I’ve learned over the years of covering this topic:

Michelle’s Social Media Maxims

1. Everybody’s doing it, but not everybody knows what they’re doing. There’s no right way or wrong way to use social media, only the best way for what you or your company wants to accomplish.

2. You don’t need to know everything, but it helps to know people who do or who know at least a little more than you. The great thing about social media is you can find experts or resources on just about everything, and add to the giant pool of knowledge as you learn.

3. It’s all about the conversation – Business today is a two-way street. The one-to-many broadcast model is outdated – just ask newspapers about that. Customers and suppliers want to have conversations with you. Figure how the best way to make that happen.

4. It’s not about the tools, it’s how you use them. You don’t need the fastest, newest, zippiest stuff, despite what the IT department tells you. Use what works for you. Twitter is great but it’s also gotten people in trouble.

5. Have a plan – and make sure everybody knows what it is. If you’re blogging, podcasting or tweeting on the company’s behalf, know what you can and can’t talk about. Companies should revise guidelines to include social media and make sure employees know the drill.

6. You don’t have to be 25 to get it, or to get a job doing it. Let people who don’t know life without the Internet do what they know. Let people who’ve been around since before there was an Internet lend perspective.

7. Teach your boss what you learn, you’ll be a hero.

8. When in doubt, ask your ‘friends’ – but first make sure you have some. Create a profile on LinkedIn, sign up for Twitter. Invite colleagues, former colleagues, suppliers, people you know from associations or trade groups join you. When you have a problem, throw it out to the crowd. Make sure you don’t give away company secrets or initiatives that’ll get you in trouble.

9. Borrow from the best – why reinvent the wheel when you can learn from others who’ve already done it.

10. If I can do it, you can too.