How do you keep up?!

Conversation prism by Brian Solis

I’ve just spent the whole weekend writing about the potential impact Web 2.0 and social media tools could have at my company and seeking out as many case studies as I could find.

One discovery I made which particularly interests me is the conversation prism (aka The Social Web) that has been developed by Brian Solis. He designed it to provide a snapshot view of dialogue with mainstream and vertical social networks and communities that may be consequential to company’s brands. Through the search functions, each site unearths threads of  discussions tied to connected keywords and positive/negative developments which may affect the company’s brand and reputation. Want to know whether a crisis is looming for your company? The prism provides a good ’air-traffic control’ view. However what I’m fascinated by is how many sites are on it. How can we ever keep up? When is enough enough?

Should we be encouraging senior managers to have their own LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, My Space profiles, to write their own blogs and publish their musings online both externally and internally through sites like Yammer?

Should Internal Communicators have more than one profile to separate their personal and professional lives? Louis Gray thinks so and even offers handy advice on how to ensure your personal and professional lives remain with that clear distinction between them.

So where does it end? When will we be satisfied that we have ticked all the boxes, made all the comments and signed up for all the apps? Or will we see some of these ‘new’ sites fade and die as the more popular ones continue to grow in strength?

Whatever the outcome, I’m interested in the journey and think it’s going to be an exciting  ride.