What happens next?

I’m slightly afraid that this might be my last post. But I hope I have the mettle to see it through.

The question that my one of my novice LinkedIn invitees (see last post) asked is: ‘What happens next’?

I confess I don’t really know how to answer that question.

Am I just helping to fill up the junkyard of cyber space? How does all this posting and linking actually achieve anything? And, each time I look at a site like mashable.com – all the information makes me think: can I ever catch up with the ‘social media’ world or should I just give up?

Is it possible to succeed in this field without an iPhone?

I just googled ‘social media blog’: 272 million results came up in 0.16 seconds.

272 million.

I am undoubtedly contributing to that junk yard. But, of those results, (and after displaying 1,000 results Google stopped to asked me if I wanted to continue because the other entries were ‘very similar to the 987 we’ve already displayed’), how many have YOU, the reader of this blog, read? Huh?

Does this social media participation actually achieve anything? ...

Well... so far not much. I think I’ve probably managed to irritate a few people I could have done without irritating by sending them unwanted LinkedIn invitations. I did get in touch with a few people out of the blue who I might not otherwise have made contact with (and we’ve promised to meet up.....).

I did discover some things that I might not have otherwise discovered by checking out Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook more often than usual. I know that X (a potential customer of a company I know) is friends with Y (a competitor of same company). I know that a fair number of Americans want to see Sarah Palin’s communications go where the sun don’t shine... And I know that a jet-setting friend of mine just returned from a luxurious tropical holiday and has jet lag.

Some undercover investigating of targets who are very active on social media has allowed me to make deductions about them that may, or may not be to their benefit (and are perhaps to my benefit). I also had to ‘unfollow’ inveterate Twitterer Duncan Bannatyne (he of Dragon’s Den fame) because it seems every time someone visits one of his leisure clubs they have to sycophantically tweet him about their simply marvellous experience and beg him to ‘retweet’ back and make their day.

But therein lies the rub.

I bet Duncan Bannatyne does well out of Twitter. But if he (a) hadn’t been a successful businessman (b) been on national TV would he be doing any better than Cicely Brown? He’s also got something to sell to the general public. Though exactly how: “Having quite lunch in Covent Garden. London seems very quiet today” helps... I’m not quiet sure?

But before I get very negative and sad. I did find – and vigorously re-post the best joke this year:

Q: What do you call an Aussie who can handle a bat?
A: A vet.

OK – I promise not to write anything more until I have something useful to say.

Below: some other things that Aussie vets might be able to handle.