I for one was digging for insight on the internet long before anyone invented the terms ‘social media’ or ‘social networking’. They’re terms I wish would disappear, since they’re frequently just dismissed as being Facebook/Twitter for geeks and teenagers.

Also a recent study showed that 77% of car buyers will take into account what fellow purchasers say about the car and only 17% take into account what is said on car adverts.

The power of social media in all this is hugely powerful and not enough people are linking the two.

Yes, you might decided you need to network more – but ‘networking’ is itself only a means to an end to achieve an objective. You’re also a guru of social media in this city, so you have a natural propensity to explore these things! Confronted with a boardroom scenario however, a series of ‘fad’ sounding words and a lot of “potential” and “maybes” probably isn’t going to win much support. (Unless you have that unfortunate management-by-buzzword situation!)

To bring more people to the table, I think we need to talk their language – and their objectives. Then based on those objectives, analyse the potential of the tools available. Then the boardroom folk will have a more easily digestible “Achieve this objective via this means”.

It’s very early days for online services such as LinkedIn – we still need to understand, and then get a feel for, what it is these tools can do. Then when there’s a business need we can decide which are the most appropriate.

I take the point about Q1 being more compelling, but my answer to Q2 might easily be – ooh, I need to do more networking so yes, I’ll use LinkedIn.

Also, I reckon there should be a shift from looking at the tool to looking at the poeple on the other end of it. LinkedIn (and others) deliver people. Ok, so the orig question was coming from a certain viewpoint, but it’d be much easier to explain LinkedIn’s potential usefulness by communicating about the audience and opportunities it offers instead.

I’m just a “compiler of information”!