A (some might contend THE) business periodical in Columbus, Ohio put together a “Social Media Bootcamp” this summer aimed at small-medium businesses. The goals (quickly paraphrasing here) are to introduce social media and a number of tools for use.

I’ve got some good friends who are presenting as part of the summer-long series. These friends, unlike many, are legitimate digitals - concerned with strategic deployment, measurement and bigger picture.

However, their presentations are focused on specific tools and networks (because this is what the camp is aimed at).

I’m not opposed to the introduction of and education on tools. It’s important.

However, I think that this camp, and SMB in general, with regard to the approach to ’social media’ is off-target, or at least putting the cart before the horse.

1) Stop calling it social media. Start calling it social web. Web is the platform,  and tools, behaviors, expectations and technology are socializing it.

2) Before you pick up your hammer and swing, let’s talk about why you’re doing it. Will the picture you’re hanging balance the room? Will you be moving it later in the month when you remodel? Are others hanging pictures? Do people even want to see this picture? Is it the right one? or does it completely throw off the theme you’re going for?

-Straight up - small and medium (even large) businesses are hip to the hype - they hear “twitter” “social media” “linkedIn” “money money money” and think “my god I’ve got to get into this!”.

Ok - maybe.

I’d like people to take a step back and understand their environments in more detail before running to learn about tools.

1) Understand your business/industry environment. Who are you serving? Who should you be serving? What is your brand? What is the industry doing? etc etc. Often, when we engage clients and work through our process, we find the standard discovery is eye-opening in that the questions we are asking have never been asked (or at least haven’t been asked in a very long time). Before you run to broadcast to the world, to engage clients and activate advocates, don’t you think you should be pretty solid on who you are, what you stand for and what you want to achieve? Else, you’re creating a spike - something that’s not sustainable and won’t have lasting impact.

2) Understand the web environment. Being able to Google something and having a Hotmail account does not mean understanding the web environment (no offense to anyone there - it helps us stay in business). The web environment is not LinkedIn & Twitter. It’s not generating leads and broadcasting (read: shouting). The web environment is a combination of light, flexible, adaptable technologies, psychological and sociological factors, time and space shift, combination and recombination, human and NOW. Business-speak: the web environment is consumer empowerment and pull-model. It’s customization, comparison, 24-7, conversation and individual. The web environment is access, value-add and trust.

If you can’t understand the web enviornment, the paradigm shift from pages to streams , then tools which exist there are useless. Time put into them is useless. Lasting value can’t be generated.

Small business or large, regardless of end-goals for implementing social web in a business environment, a failure or inability to understand the landscape and fundamental parameters often means an attempt at a quick fix and an outstretched hand at dollars instead of value.

What do you think?