Mike Vickers' Blog

I have just finished Know Me, Like Me, Follow Me by Penny Power of ecademy.

It’s an lovely book to read but I did not find it an easy one to get to grips with.

Ecademy is one of the first if not The first vehicles for Social Media and Penny must be the Social Media-ist par excellence.  Penny sees that being a member of the social media is the way of future commerce in the twenty first century.  As she sees it there is no future for the corporate executive; they are living in a closed box and unless they break out they are doomed to extinction.  (I am remaindered of Tim Smit of the Eden Project saying ‘Focus is utter rubbish – think of everything and take an aerial view’).

In her book she provides a number of attractive examples of social media-ists being known, liked, followed and in consequence becoming centres of excellence in their own fields.  But they are most if not all single individuals providing advice and guidance to others.

I agree that the current economic realities are such that the individual is increasingly king, but I cannot see that large organisations will just fizzle and die. Large organisations are the backbone of modern Western capitalist society as we know it and for that matter all societies since civilisations began back in China.  I would hate to have to rely on an air line with one plane and one pilot to fly me across the Atlantic or for that matter make my own tooth paste. 

I am a member of ecademy and I am clear that Social Media is a powerful vehicle for individual experts communicating, broadening their horizons and achieving individual success, but it cannot, in my view, be the only way forward for civilisation as a whole.  There will always be a role for larger organisations providing the infrastructure to support these expert individuals and provide them with work opportunities.

BTW I am also a member of BNI, the Small Business Club, the Chamber of Commerce and the West Lothian Coffee Morning all of which provide a vehicle for knowing, liking and following me.