This video from Seth Godin really challenged me on social networking this weekend. I’m really re-thinking the way I do social networking. This statement is what challenged me the most:

“Networking is always important when it’s real and it’s always a useless distraction when it’s fake”

Here are some questions I’m asking myself. In the future I’ll post about my social media strategy. I’d love to hear your thoughts on these questions:

• How can we use social media to make real connections?

• How can we really add value to people through social media?

• How do you measure the success of how we use social media?

• Are we really making a difference through our efforts?

• How much of the way I use social media is a useless distraction?
  

Thoughts?

¹⁷ And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father. – Colossians 3:17

Yesterday I covered how Social Media could ruin your life, today I want to focus on how it could benefit your life, in addition to changing the world.

Social Media Can Inspire the World – People often downplay tweeting inspirational quotes – does it really matter? Well, all quotes can do is inspire someone. When the inspiration turns to action – it makes a huge difference. My take: inspire as often as possible – you never know who you’re inspiring and what will happen if they act on that inspiration.

Social Media Can Encourage the World- Everybody needs encouragement. Social media provides an avenue to encourage everyone often.  Encourage everybody you can!

Social Media Makes the World a Better Place – Again, it comes down to who is using it. But what if we’re always encouraging and inspiring people with what we do through social media? You can’t tell me the world wouldn’t be a better place!

Social Media Can Expand Your Influence – You have an opportunity to build your reputation and increase your influence for good or bad with everything you do through social media. Build a great platform – I recommend reading Michael Hyatt’s Blog – he is a master at this. He posted about building your online platform here.

Social Media Can Cause Your Product or Business to Thrive - If you’re consistent and continue to provide products, ideas, inspiration, and encouragement that will benefit others, word will spread and you’ll benefit.

Social Media Can Spread Your Message around the World - What are you passionate about? What is the one message you want to communicate to the world? For me, I want people to know that the best life they could ever live is passionately living for God everyday. Everything I do is to spread that message. If it’s a message worth spreading, it will get around!

What am I missing? What other ways are social media beneficial?

¹⁷ And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father. – Colossians 3:17

Yesterday I said that social media is like money, it’s neutral. Whether or not the use of it will result in a positive or negative outcome is entirely up to the user. Today I want to focus on the negative aspect of social media. Here are my thoughts:

You Could Waste Your Life - How much time do you spend on Facebook? How much time do you spend on other people’s pages wishing you were them, could date them, had as many friends as them? How much time do you spend building a reputation online that isn’t even close to what your real life is? Just some thoughts…

You Could Destroy Your Reputation – Ultimately – this really comes down to how you live your life on a daily basis. If you don’t live a life of integrity and make unwise decisions, most likely whether it’s through pictures or people talking through social media, the entire world is going to find out, and what’s worse, once it’s out there, you can’t get it back.

You Could Miss Out on Your Dream Job - Resume’s are boring -> companies would rather google you.  What does Google say about you? Twitter? Your Facebook account? Your pictures? Social media will tell more about you than a resume ever will. If you were an employer and you saw your pictures or googled your name, would you hire you?

You Could Destroy Relationships - There is danger in how connected we can be through social media. Married people  could connect with lovers from high school, you can send love messages to people who are in a relationship and see if they’ll leave who their with to be with you… Basically: it’s a place that could lead to some very bad decisions if you don’t have boundaries in place or apply wisdom.

It Could Kill Your Business, Church, Organization - How often do you check what people said about a product or restaurant before you bought it or visited? When people visit your business, church, or organization, they will talk about  it. They will talk about it online and over time, the more people that talk, the more your companies reputation is effected through viral marketing of your customers. It’s either going to be good or bad, if it’s bad and you don’t do anything to change that… you’re not going to last very long.

These are just a few ways social media could ruin your life…..What am I missing?