eric rochow : social media handyman

I’m all about being practical, and most any time I am with social media people, I make the comment that most social media people spend a large part of their time talking to other social media people about how great social media is.

Today in Liz Strauss’ blog, Succesful Blog, she wrote post, The Real-World Social Media Heroes List. She asks, ” have we lost track of how few of us there are [ in social media ] and how small our conversation really is? ”

Yes.

Liz goes on to ask ” Who are the folks using the tools to make a difference in the world?”

My answer on her blog is The Home Depot, on Twitter known as @TheHomeDepot . Sarah from their Corporate Communications department manages their Twitter account, and I learned about their Twitter account during the Hurrican Gustav.

During Gustav, several Social Media types on Twitter set up a ning.com site to help out, what help it did I don’t know, but I saw a ton of Tweets about the site. I gave it a look and one conversation thread was about whether the site should be a social network or a wiki. Once again, social media people talking to social media people, not the people who really need the info.

But social media did help. We can’t measure the impact in a concrete way, but Sarah at The Home Depot did a brilliant job of sending out relevant information about what stores in the storm’s path were open, what supplies one should have, etc.

I don’t think a ton of people saw these Twitter posts, but some people did, and I’m sure they then passed this information on to friends and neighbors. Which location had generators? Sarah told people.

I am really glad she mentioned the following. While one would think this is obvious, you’d be surprised how each year people die of carbon monoxide poisoning from running a generator indoors.

Sarah’s real person writing style is great, this is not corporate speak, its a real person who works for a real company, but clearly someone who cares. A very smart move by The Home Depot to post this information on Twitter, and a very good example of social media used in the real world.