Social Is As Social Does

I’ve just returned from a week’s holiday which meant that I spent little time online. Just before I went away there was a short bout of navel gazing reflective blogging from some of my friends in the HR blogosphere about social media and HR, what it all means, is it doing what it should and is it worth the effort. Sukh and Neil had some strong views and quite a few people didn’t agree with Sukh. Richard weighed in from New Zealand and there was much angst on the Twitter timeline.

It’s a fairly regular occurrence. We’re never far away from a ‘what’s it all about really‘ post. I was ready to weigh in with one on Fear and Loathing in Social Media but then remembered that I’d already written it 4 years ago.

Amongst my wider network it always the HR community that seems to worry about what’s happening. I’m part of other communities – marketers and football fans to name but two – and rarely see a blog about whether we’re doing it right, or if we’re ever going to bring about a revolution. But within the HR community it’s a given that from time to time someone will wake up and not see the point of it all.

Maybe we expect too much.

It’s about conversation. And its about people. Both are very unpredictable and neither will consistently conform to your expectations.

Some people have agendas
Some are good self publicists
Some are good at not being self publicists when they really are
Some of us are really clever
Some of us think we’re really clever
Some of us think we’re not clever at all
Some of us take offence easily
Some of us give offence easily
Some of us have more followers because we’ve been doing this social malarkey a lot longer
Some of us like to converse
Some of us like to broadcast
Some of us want everyone to know what we’re up to
Some of us are a bit private
We all have opinions
Some of us like to shout our opinions
Some of us like to disagree
Some of us talk all day every day
Some of us like to dip in and out
Some of us will think everyone’s talking about us
Some of us will worry that no-one’s talking about us
Some of us want the first word
Some of us want the last word

But beneath it all we’re just people. Being ourselves.

And some days it will all make sense…and some days it won’t.

Remember it’s social…all human life is here….