HR Social Media 2.0 – the future is here now

HR Social Media 2.0

Mark today down in your calendars.   Today is the day that HR Social Media 2.0 takes flight!

What is HR Social Media 2.0?    Officially, it is just a term I am using to mark a transition point.  Seriously, it is something that has been coming together for a while now.  I was thinking about this last week when I wrote about social media fatigue.    The shine has come off of social media for those of us in the HR space who have been early adopters.   We are shifting the way we are spending our time and the way we are utilizing social media tools.    This shift seems to be going in two directions.

Some people are cutting back on social media

Paul Hebert shared his thoughts on this yesterday in a post on his blog.    Using a “Brokeback Mountain” anaology, Paul shares that while he still loves social media and its benefits, he needs to take a step back from an intense relationship, and reevaluate how he feels about social media right now.  You really should read the entire post, but here is the gist of it in Paul’s own words.

Unfortunately, like our real-life relationships – we don’t stay in our drugged state forever.  We slowly begin to come out of the endorphin rush and one day we wake up and wonder who really is in our technology bed.  I’m at that point now.  I love you social media – but I’m not “in” love with you.

Paul outlines a personal strategy of “cutting back” on social media by pruning his twitter followers, reducing some blog feeds from his Reader,  and leaving LinkedIn groups that aren’t any benefit to him.  This seems to be the approach of many people I talk to are taking.   Not leaving all together, but ratcheting back their level of participation to something that works for them.  It is reasonable, and it makes sense for many.

HR Social Media 2.0 is a quiet revolution

The other direction that some people in the HR and social media is to try and take the use of the tools and their own level of personal investment to the next level.  This is happening before our eyes on several levels.   This is probably more of an evolution than it is a revolution, but it is still palpable and exciting.

Over the past several months, many people have obtained new positions or launched new businesses models in the HR social media space.  This list is not intended to be comprehensive, but I am talking about people like Lance  Haun, John Hollon, and Amy Beth Hale, all of them with ERE.  HR practitioners like Jennifer McClure and  Jessica Miller-Merrell are newly minted solopreneurs running their own practice wrapped around HR and social media.  Larger businesses like People Report and  Talent Revolution are doing amazingly cool work in the restaurant service sector, using social media tools as a central piece of their delivery strategy.

Yesterday, in what might be the most ambitious pure social media play in the HR space to date, Laurie Ruettimann, and Mark and Yasha Stelzner announced the formation of a new business venture called New Media Services LLC.   New Media Services is intended to be  “the single destination for comprehensive virtual, digital, and social media strategies for the career and HR industries”.  They also announced one of their services, Voice of HR.   More on that in a moment.

Our professional associations are also making serious moves to adopting social media.    SHRM has hired Curtis Midkiff to oversee their social media efforts, including the blogging squad at the 2010 conference.  At least two state chapters now have social media directors as part of their organizational structure, Illinois with Dave Ryan, and my own HR Florida with Stephen Harrison.

Next week, I will be attending the Illinois State Conference on 8/2 and 8/3 as a member of their on-site social media team along with Curtis from SHRM,  along with Trish McFarlane, Sarah White, and Charee Klimek, all of whom do great work in the HR/social media space.  I am looking forward to attending #ILSHRM10, and being a part of the program.  The Illinois state HR association, including John Jorgenson deserve praise for their leadership and forward thinking in this area.  I look forward to being a part of these strategic efforts by the Illinois SRM group!

Finally, I am going to close by quoting from an announcement that came out today from my own state chapter, HR Florida and a new business unit belonging to Laurie and Stelzner, Voice of HR.  Other chapters are doing cool things, but I think HR Florida is emerging as the state leader in the use of social media as part of the conference experience.  Here is the quote, and a cuple of other small things that we are doing.

HR Florida partners with Voice of  HR, Monster

From a press release today, The HR Florida State Council, which represents over 14,000 individual HR members, has partnered with Voice of HR to provide social media services to the 2010 HR Florida State Conference & Expo in Orlando, Florida.

And this was released on Twitter yesterday by State Conference Carol McDaniel,  “Monster’s in the house for #HRFL10!  Stay tuned for details on the Monster Social at http://is.gd/dPbbM!”.  There will be some special guests including China Gorman and Laurie Ruettimann, and a lot of Monster Social kicking at this tweetup event.!

We also have assembled an awesome blog squad / expert panel  of our own, including Trish McFarlane, William Tincup, Mark Stelzner, Franny Oxford, and Steve Boese.

This is what HR  Social Media 2.0 is going to look like.   People using the tools to build businesses, to do the work, and  to enrich and extend learning opportunities.   I’m sure we will see much more coming, but remember, today is the day that HR Social Media 2.0 takes flight!

That future is here right now!    If you want to hear more about all this, tune into the HR Happy Hour for episode 56, the HR Florida preview in just about an hour!  (7/28/2010)

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Tagged as: Business, HR Florida, John Hollon, Lance Haun, Laurie Ruettimann, Marketing and Advertising, Social Media, Society for Human Resource Management