It’s a long way to the bottom

Liked the piece in Social Media Today by Marc Meyer which asks whether we try to do too much with social media (‘Are we slaves to the rhythm of social media?‘):

“What do you think? What is acceptable? Frankly I try to limit my time into blocks built around the work day and even at home. But I can see where one could spend endless amounts of time building and maintaining social media personas from here to BFE and back. The question is. What is your ultimate plan or goal with social media? As a layperson and as a professional, do you have an end game result in mind? Do you have a plan?”

Personally, speaking as a relative outside to the mainstream of the web 2.0 world I would say I don’t want to follow the mainstream and think the more you out in the more you get out, though for most people that’s obviously true. Business like, I want to do the minimum to get the maximum return. How to do that of course requires a great deal of work and learning. Or to use the old quote about a guy’s struggle to get out of the ghetto: “It’s a long way to the bottom.”

Office 2.0 Conference ION case study

“Can organizations build web communities with predictable success?  This workshop calls on our experiences of building ion (the institute online network) — the award winning collection of web based communities for the ICAEW member network — as well as other communities powered by WordFrame, and the available research material.  The Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales is the UK’s largest professional membership organization for accountants in the UK.  In the workshop we use this case study, combined with direct experiences to provide a set of guidelines to help you start and manage a successful and sustainable web community.”