Originally by: Miguel de Arcos
Hot off the wire, Facebook announces that they have hit 500 million users(that’s more than the entire population of the United States!). Forget the fact that we now have another college aged billionaire, this is concrete proof that social media is the new communication method. I still know MANY business people who are social media hold outs. They “don’t like it”, “don’t trust it”, “don’t have time for it.” To each his own, but with the monumental leaps that technology is taking every 2 years, a business person will be left in the dark trying to figure out how to get ahead and how to get people to hear them.
Just yesterday one of America’s most highly sought after female speakers, Terry Sjodin, gave an excellent private presentation to the Sperry Van Ness Florida team about persuasive presentations. She has trained and motivated thousands of people from all over the world. Her first task was to help us understand our audience by describing the 3 generational personality types. The Boomers, don’t trust computers and want to do most everything in person; the Gen Xers, are skeptical of everything and need hard facts and regular communication to trust you; and the Millennials. They are the over-stimulation generation, hardwired into the internet preferring to receive all their information wirelessly through the web, text, email and social media sites(ALL AT THE SAME TIME!) It is almost like they have developed a new language made up of short hand abbreviations, concise thoughts limited to 140 characters and assimilating multiple streams of info from friends, associates and news sites.
And by the way, the Millennials will outnumber the baby boomers as the largest generation in the next 5 years. 98% of all age appropriate millennials have a social networking presence. We all know, that in person interaction is still important, but the point is, that the business people of tomorrow will be doing things much different than the “traditional” way of the last 50 years.
If you really look back at the last 5 years, you will notice a giant socio-tech leap forward into the wireless technology era. Wireless internet is everywhere(including airplanes); streaming video cameras and TV on cell phones; large desktop computers condensed to a light weight iPad; millions of apps that put the world in your hands; hand-held smart phones that could redirect the space shuttle if programmed correctly; and perhaps the most astonishing is the unbelievable ease of use with these incredible small but powerful tools. Tap or flick the screen and you’re in business. I remember how difficult programing a VCR used to be…
You cannot stop a train once it has left the station, and this social media train is half way across the world already. As a business person if you don’t adopt the new social media paradigm into your daily lives, you will be in the minority and the new socio-tech generation soon WILL NOT UNDERSTAND YOU!
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