The Importance Of Being Useful

Until our modern day, humanity had never made useless tools. When archaeologists found "tools" while unearthing history, they would find hammers or arrowheads - tools that were clearly designed to solve some sort of problem. Useful tools. When historians look back at the exploding universe of social media tools that we are building today, they will clearly uncover considerably less usefulness. Being useful has become a forgotten virtue.

Without it, new platforms pop up every day to try and capitalize on some sort of micro-issue ... all adding to the sense of overload that many of us are now feeling when it comes to how social media fits into our lives. In the business world, this has translated into an overload of advice and confusing array of options. Running a marketing campaign for any product or service is much more complex because media channels themselves have become more complex.

So how do we solve this problem? Getting better and more useful advice has to be part of the solution, which is why I am so excited by the Corporate Social Media Summit, an event coming up in June in New York run by a company called "Useful Social Media." I have partnered with them to participate in their events before, and unlike many other "guru-centric" social media conferences, their events feature real corporate marketers from brands like Coke, Best Buy, HP, Marriott, Southwest and sharing real case studies on how they are using social media.

It is a useful format in a world that is plagued by a rise of uselessness - and I am pleased to share that they invited me back to once again moderate a panel on the first day of the event. As many previous attendees have shared, it is an event worth attending. To make the deal slightly sweeter, the organizers have kindly offered a discount code for readers of this blog and Ogilvy clients - just use "ROHIT10" for 10% off registration.

Hope to see you there!

Image Credit: Joshua Porter (Follow Joshua on Twitter @bokardo)