First of all, this story is pretty long for a blog entry, but it includes interesting findings about the use of social media and what it can do for you.

I am surprised how many people still think that social media is only a new trend that will fade away soon. I run into very intelligent executives and their view of social media is that it is just a distraction and that he/she does not want to have his/her employees to waste time on it. I have even had clients that have told me not to use the word social media in the presence of his/her employees.  That is almost unreal to me and I am wondering how these people will be able to survive in the long run running their companies? If they are not willing to understand the world of digital natives and not even try to become digital immigrants, they might have issues running their companies going forward.

Let me tell you a real example of social media from my own life, something that really shows that you really do not have to know somebody to be able to start a discussion and without being categorized as a spammer. This story includes multiple people including me that got connected via social media and the discussion is still continuing. This is an example for those people that do not believe in social media and that still think that social media is nonsense. It might be nonsense to some, but if you want to stay on top of future requirements, you might want to reconsider your stance. I hope this example gets some of the non-believers to at least reconsider their stance.

One night I was linking myself to a person that I knew from the past via LinkedIn service and I found another person that sounded somehow familiar to me. Maybe it was her Swedish name and I wondered if she had gone in the same business school with me in Helsinki (Hanken). I did a quick Internet search and found her fascinating profile. Her name is Cristina Andersson, an author of The Winning Helix and owner of Develor company in Finland. She is a well-known coach and speaker with impressive background. I connected to her via Facebook, LinkedIn and we agreed to meet in Helsinki during my next trip.

Cristina did not know me from the past, our roads had never crossed and it might be that my 12+ years outside Finland had something to do with this as well. Meeting people in the net for social/business connections can be risky if you do not know whom you are connecting with. This connection was confirmed by another strong professional from Finland that is extremely connected and I admire her use of social media. Her name is Riitta Raesmaa, co-founder of Sopima ; a SaaS company that has achieved tremendous recognition during the past few months.

Sopima is building an awesome solution on Windows Azure platform from Microsoft to manage contracts online (Online Contract Bank) and they have a bright future ahead of them. Riitta and I have worked together in the past; she was my marketing director when I was corporate CEO for an international business intelligence company. Riitta put a note on my Facebook wall asking if I knew Cristina from the past… I said I did not but now I know and Riitta also confirmed this connection.

The virtual connection with Cristina led to a physical meeting in Helsinki.  My company TELLUS International  was contracted to do a 6 country Western Europe business seminar series for Microsoft WebsiteSpark members and one of the countries were Finland so I was able to meet Cristina during a beautiful and sunny Helsinki morning in late May 2010. We exchanged books, I got both her Finnish and English version of her The Winning Helix book and I gave my first book Onnistu suuressa maailmassa to her. I am looking forward Cristina to comment on my new book Rohkeasti maailmalle that just came out as well.

Suddenly I got a Facebook request from person that I did not know from the past. It was Eve Holopainen from Ladywebbi, the owner of a Finnish social media/marketing company. The fact that I got connected with Eve was not a coincidence; she knows both Cristina and Riitta well, whereby the virtual connection is now strengthening with ongoing conversation. Like in physical meetings, I became part of a network that I did not have before and Riitta was the only connection that could confirm who I was and also if either Eve or Cristina wanted to know something from my past.

The relevance of this blog post is that the social networking really works if you do it in the right way. If you spam the network, as many do, you will not get where you need to go. You need to be intelligent how you get connected even with people that you do not know. The way I do it is to refer to people that we both know, as this confirms that my connection request did not come from outer space and that there is a valid connection and reason for me to get connected.

It is sad to see many successful entrepreneurs not realizing the power of social media. These entrepreneurs have everything that is needed to get the word out to the cyberspace of their product/solution, but they limit themselves by not participating in the collaboration in forums/blogs/social media sites. By becoming an influencer in your domain, you will gain respect but it will always take time.

Do not expect your couple of blog entries change the world. You will have to change the way you think about your daily activities and how the social media is changing our ways of working and how you can benefit of it. I have during my worldwide travel seen hundreds of examples of people that have got it.

I am also very impressed how Eve, Riitta, and Cristina are using the social media to educate people about things that are close to their heart. Social media to me is to educate and not to force your sales message to somebody’s throat. Social media is to build your digital presence and continue nurturing your followers with information that they know that you have a passion for. Therefore it is really important to select your focus in the social media as you will fail if you try to be everything to everybody. You won’t be successful in business if you do not focus. The same rules apply in social media world as well.

Time will tell what I will do together with Eve, Cristina and Riitta but the foundation is there to continue innovating of cooperation and collaboration.

If you are not in the social media age, I would highly recommend you to start looking at it to learn what can be done and what is required from you. If you are the CEO of the company, you cannot just order your employees to start working with social media, you need to be part of that as well. This is unfortunately like quality management in the past… The CEO says that now we will be a quality driven company and hire a quality manager and the task of this poor manager is to be the quality guy without organizational support. Do you still remember those days? I do vividly and I remember many of these guys resign as there really wasn’t any organizational support.

I rest my case now and will come with new posts around this topic and how this impact our daily lives.