These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Enterprise transformation is indeed at hand, driven by this thing that is inadequately described today as social media. There is a clear disconnect between the common association of the term with what it can actually do. It is on us in the social media industry to raise the maturity of the conversation surrounding the term so that it becomes adopted as core to corporate strategy and not just another marketing channel.
But how? Let's first realize that language is transitory and always evolving. Neologisms, or new words, emerge on an ongoing basis to better explain emerging concepts. There are, in fact, nearly 1,000 new words added daily to the Urban Dictionary. Many are slang terms with limited life spans. Others take root and become part of our broader vocabulary.
In 2001, when Converseon first formed, we struggled to find language to explain the new paradigm that was emerging that required new ways of thinking. The term "social media" first began to coalesce around 2003 to describe the impact of personal media and opinion through the emergence of low-cost publishing platforms. It was a term we adopted.
In those early days, we were delighted when people started to use the term "social media." The term quickly gained acceptance among the community and has since then, of course, gained pervasiveness beyond the expectations the relatively small "social media" community had in those early days. There are more than 160 million pages indexed in Google referring to the term "social media."
Now, almost a decade later, we look forward to the day we all stop using it since its very use is stunting. Like the Buddha in the road, it's time to kill it off. We certainly can't end the use tomorrow, but we can work together with those in the industry to begin to evolve the language surrounding it to better reflect its power. We are rapidly moving to a post-social media world, where all media is social, and brands and businesses recognize its power to influence the entire enterprise.
And the power of social is transforming agencies too. Instead of tactics and eye candy, the true value of social has to emerge from the inside-out. As enterprises begin to becoming "listening organizations" and infuse social intelligence across the enterprise with workflow tools, they are finding themselves tackling core issues like culture, governance, polices, infrastructure, workflow, and training so that they build connections, celebrate innovation, drive new relationships, and become agile enough to compete in this new social world.
This is an opportunity for agencies to help facilitate that transformation by becoming enterprise-wide solutions and helping create fertile environments internally at brands so that social can flourish. For brands to become social organizations, simple outside-in approaches are doomed to fail over time. Indeed, a growing number of organizations are beginning to have conversations about how social can transform organizations, but this is largely still in its infancy.
Language is power. Language isn't only what we use to communicate; it also determines how we think. In a post-social media world, we look forward to working with others to articulate a new, elevated vocabulary, and concepts that the C-suite can appreciate while giving the concept of "social media" the respect it deserves.
Rob Key is founder and CEO of Converseon.
On Twitter? Follow Key at @robkey. Follow iMedia at @iMediaTweet.
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