Question for Exeter's #likeminds - how deep is the social element of social media?

By PRSD, on Thursday, October 15, 2009

With the Like Minds conference taking place in Exeter tomorrow (Friday, October 16), we thought we’d ask about the social element of social media.

We’re not talking about increasing your ROI (that’s Return on Investment for you non-marketeers), but creating community cohesion and confidence through digital communication.

There should be plenty of views on the topic. One of the speakers will be South Devon’s own Laura Whitehead. Laura is apparently “the queen of nonprofit technology in the UK”, according to Fast Company.

Rick Waghorn, whose “community-focussed, self-serve advertising system, Addiply” we use ourselves (check us out being mentioned on Journalism.co.uk) is booked in.

And so is Daren Forsyth of 140Characters.co.uk – ‘a new venture dedicated to creating and promoting social change via strategic social networking across the corporate, governmental and nonprofit sectors’ (which ironically takes up more than 140 characters).

We’ve just posed the question in our headline – follow the Twitter feed below.

Come and enjoy Devon – book a hotel and get away!

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Scott Gould

Hey Guys

To answer your question, "how deep is the social element of social media", my answer is quite simply, "however social you make it"

Like Minds, for instance, is using online social media tools to enable offline interaction and community. Everyone is talking about it because there is this community and it is something that matters.

But to make it social like this, we've had to build community. We've had to say no to certain things, and say 'yes' to others. I think many people use social media without making decisive decisions to be social, or take it into the real world.

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