Day 6: The 12 Days of SoMe

Posted by: Alison Chisnell on: December 6, 2013

In: Advent | Social Media
3 Comments

One of the aspects I really enjoy about curating these blogs is that they bring me into contact with people I have not necessarily met or interacted with previously. Today’s post is written by Annette Hill, who can be found on Twitter as @familyhrguru and over on her blog.

Artwork for today (and every day!) by the brilliant Simon Heath.

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At least one person reading this will know why I have chosen SoMe as a personal topic. In fact more than one, as I have shared my failure to grasp the blindingly obvious with a few colleagues now… Yes, I spent several weeks after I first heard the term, wondering what ‘SoMe’ was:

A new social media app I had not come across yet?
A special one for HR or L&D types?
A club I had not yet been invited into?
A club/app/group that was all about being ‘so me’ as in authentic, true to your values etc. (I really like that one, actually!)
I even Googled it, and was treated to the Wikipedia explanation of the meaning of the word ‘some’!

What makes this worse is that I love acronyms; an essential criteria for working in the public sector. I also have older teenage children who try to keep me up to speed! But clearly, I wasn’t getting it, and MRW (my reaction when) I found out what SoMe is short for was to hit my forehead in disbelief, whilst SMH (shaking my head.) Slightly easier than rubbing my tummy and patting my head at the same time.

Anyway, to return to SoMe (Social Media, of course!) and what I have learned and enjoyed in the 2 years since I joined Twitter, here is an attempt at the 12 days of SoMe and what it means to me.

On the 12^th day of SoMe, my i-phone sent to me:

12 New Followers-a-Tweeting. It is always great to see new people following and to look at their profile and recent tweets then re-follow. I personally find those automated follow thanks, or apps that say how many followed, or unfollowed you somewhat soulless. Is SoMe really social if people use automation to reply instead of humanly (humanely) interacting by commenting personally?

11 Great people to follow. As above, there are so many people with such a breadth and diversity of views to share. It took me nearly 2 years to sort out the people and organisations I follow into Lists, so I can be discerning when I want to be.

10 Retweeted articles. I read articles from a broader range of newspapers and journals since I joined Twitter and I do try to avoid just reading from the sources whose views are most like mine.

9 Virtual learnings. Where to start? It’s great to be at events, but as an employed full-time person, I more often than not can’t be there, but I can still follow what’s going on.

8 HR Peeps-a-Sharing. I’m a bit biased about my profession, and this includes L&D and OD as well, but I think we are grasping the benefits and possibilities beautifully. We tend to be a gregarious lot. The trick is sharing more widely.

7 Bloggers-a-blogging. Writing a blog has been quite a scary step for me. I have been intermittent and sometimes lacking in inspiration, but my learning is to read and support loads of others and to keep going with my own.

6 Leaders-a-learning. SoMe is perfect for busy people with little time. I love the opportunity to dip in and out of the rich seam of information available. I also think all leaders should be learning all the time.

5 Facebook Memes. Some funnier than others, and apparently shared more by older Facebookers, according to my daughter. Maybe it’s my light relief from the (semi) professional use of Twitter, or maybe I don’t have much of a life…

4 LinkedIn invitations I haven’t really used LinkedIn as much as I could, and am still a bit unsure, especially when getting invites from people I don’t know and e-mail reminders to congratulate people I haven’t seen or interacted with in years for quite trivial things…

3 Annoying hashtags. Indeed, but for every #annoying one there is an #amusing one.

2 Retweeted comments. This is how I have found most of the new people to follow, and presumably that’s the whole point.

And an i-pad on my knee at all times. Oh, possibly a bad thing. Has my attention span shortened? Or has my ability to multi-task improved? We’ll see. This is why I am reading Daniel Goleman’s Focus, and in real book format…!