Guest post: Talk is cheap

Made Social on 15 July 2010 | View Comments

In advance of Social Collective, we have been inviting select people to guest blog and join the SoCol debate, hopefully offering a fresh point of view. We have been asking a range of people to contribute, including those working in social, client side, techies, journos etc with a view of building a wider picture. Any questions raised during this process will be addressed during a panel at SoCol in September.

Our fifth guest blog in the series is from Peter Bouvier aka @iBoov

Talk is cheap

And we’ve been talking about social media, through social media for so long now, perhaps the conversation itself has become paramount, but…

Actions speak louder than words and social media needs a goal.

We get together to chat, play games, swap music, and share photos on the social web.

We meet online to discuss news and sport events, television shows, films and new product releases: Michael Jackson’s death, the Leaders’ debates, the World Cup, the iPad.

We flock together when we’re given a direction: the Iran elections, the Haiti earthquake, even the Christmas number one.

Social media has provided us with an opportunity to draw on the collective knowledge of our networks to a degree that has never before been possible. What’s more, the world of business, the media, politicians, artists, musicians…. are all now within reaching distance.

For me, the power of social media is two-fold.

First, as a member of the community, I have skills, knowledge and experience which I want to share with others: sometimes for free, sometimes for a fee.

Second, as a consumer, I want to take advantage of all that knowledge. I want to use the network I’ve built up to tell my where I can get the best deal, how to fix a problem, who I need to talk to, where to stay, and what’s happening.

Businesses are waking up to the idea that they too can capitalise on this shared knowledge. They have problems we can solve. There is strength in our numbers. BP received nearly 40,000 suggestions from members of the public about novel ways to stop their oil spill. Around 800 of those ideas were forwarded to engineers to see if they can realistically be applied. If ever there was a need for a business to fill a gap, then this is it.

So, what can we achieve?

I look to SoCol to bring about real change. I’d like to see groups of us getting together to share our knowledge, creating business for each other, and pro-actively seeking out new business for all of us.

Look to your own company. Find the gap in your business. Perhaps we can help.

About Peter Bouvier

Peter Bouvier is Social Media Editor for a UK Government body and has worked in project management, planning and education. Peter is also a keen consumer of current affairs, a writer, a lover not a fighter, a husband and a father of two.

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View other posts in our guest blog series:

Show social or show business by @Chris_Hall1

Back to the future by @AdamVincenzini

Managing Client Expectation in Search by @ChrisJHyland

Get Excited And Make Things by @stuartwitts