The con­fla­tion of social media (things we make and share online) and social net­works (a human thing that we can, but don’t nec­es­sar­ily do online) is, I believe, one of the rea­sons organ­i­sa­tions strug­gle with social. Cer­tainly, in my expe­ri­ence, when you sit down with peo­ple and start try­ing to bring them along on the “social busi­ness is a good thing” jour­ney, this con­fu­sion is a com­mon chal­lenge to be surmounted.

After all, casual shar­ing of pics of your cat is hardly pro­duc­tive, is it?

Con­versely, col­lab­o­ra­tion with your col­leagues, peers and stake­hold­ers in order to inno­vate, make or save money, that’s good right?

I think as peo­ple who work in and around social media and social net­works, try­ing to help our col­leagues under­stand the ben­e­fits of what we believe to be a good thing, it’s incum­bent upon us to act like the pro­fes­sional com­mu­ni­ca­tors we say we are and make sure we say “media” when we mean media and say “net­work” when we mean net­work. Con­flat­ing the two does us no favors.

Of course, this is some­thing of an absolute posi­tion, and there are always points where the two blur legit­i­mately. We need to be aware of that and make sure we use the right words at the right time, com­mu­ni­cat­ing well.