Cooperation makes it happen. Working together. Dig it?

Early on in the web, the people who made websites were those who were technically inclined and skilled with coding. Once the commercial web was up and running, around the turn of the century (mindblowing, eh?), it became apparent that ecommerce didn’t just need to function – web design was a form of marketing communication, and it turned out the job of designing sites was a graphic design situation. People with an understanding of formal design, communication, and visual persuasion took their rightful place and the UI/UX designer was born. Only now do you see complex coding not in the job description of designers, as employers recognize the distinction between the two skill sets.

Something similar is afoot in the realm of social media. Among the backlash against the glut of gurus, ninjas, and wizards, there is an emerging skill set that has little to do with understanding the difference between an API and an IPO. Enter the socialites.

I’m reading Tara Hunt‘s The Whuffie Factor, and in it she details the physical extent she went to in order to properly market a startup. She moved to new city—a new country, in fact—and her network and reputation there were small. To forge relationships that could be brought online, Tara went out every single night, sometimes to a few places, to meet people in real life. Socializing, if you will.

I’m doing a series of interviews with filmmakers like Melissa Pierce on fundraising creative projects through social media, and repeatedly the story that unfolds is one of real life relationships going online. Face to face, or at least a mediated one to one, making people’s acquaintance and cooperating to do something mutually beneficial.

The social medium is probably finished being the message, except in terms of impressing customers that you’re meeting them on their terms. It’s time to get down to what social media makes so easy: people meeting, expressing interest in each other’s projects, sharing neat stuff, and helping each other out when we can.

This is why social media can never be put on an agency’s deliverables checklist. It takes time. It takes personal investment. It’s a network buzzing around individuals. It’s social capital (the new kind, not the classic kind) that’s lost when individuals leave organizations.

I’ve asserted before that orgs should seek out staff with large personal networks. Influence can’t be bought, only built over time by building trust.

Trust is why we shouldn’t despair that social media is being ruined by marketing. The positive energy required to build community is self-perpetuating and forces companies to toe the line. No one’s going to build a giant network one friendship at a time only to serve them spam when they come over for dinner.

The gurus who totally get Twitter lists can now give way to the friendly, helpful, interesting, genuine people who intuitively understand that cooperation and friendships are the best way to get where we’re going.

Social Butterflies: Tara Hunt on women in social media

Next in a series of interviews with female Canadian social media stars! The premise, which you can read about here, investigates how women act towards each other in the quest to be head social butterfly.

Tara Hunt is a genuine Canadian social media superstar (& there is reason to believe she may have once lived, however briefly, in Winnipeg Brandon). Author of The Whuffie Factor, Tara’s actually one of the most freaking influence women in technology. Here’s a Slideshare on her contribution to social media theory, the idea of Whuffie, first postulated by another Canadian futurist superstar, Cory Doctorow.