CalPoly

Nice, short article/blog post about social media and the misguided efforts to push product in order to engage users by Umair Haque.

Using the social to “build buzz” and “push product” is about as smart as using a warp drive to visit your local Wal-Mart. Social tools today are used mostly as a new “channel” to push the same old useless stuff of the industrial era at hapless “consumers.” That’s meaninglessness at it’s finest. It’s the least productive — and most soul-deadening — use of a formidably powerful tool.

Haque talks about companies that do build meaningful social interaction online.

They are about developing the capacity to understand an organization’s role in society, and how to play a more constructive one, wielding sociality as a source of advantage — by acting radically more meaningfully than rivals.

Haque lays out several (alliterative) steps you can take to move your social interactions into the meaningful.

• From Social Media to Social Strategy at Harvard Business Review