[Image via Life Magazine]

Are there two more groan-inducing, not-you-again, put-on-your-earmuffs words than “social media?” If you say yes, then this article might be for you. If you say no, this article still might be for you. Because regardless of whom you are and where you stand, you need to have a social media presence, and this post aims to explain why.

Social media, as I’ve sure you’ve witnessed, is now a viable form of mass communication, and its interactive, abbreviated, real-time nature has influenced our other forms of communicating. I think it’s reasonably safe to say that we tend to think and speak in shorter, more easily digestible forms today than we did when Thomas Payne wrote Common Sense (@tompayne Monarchy is oppressive. We need our own govt w/ representation for all. Who’s ready to fight for it?). We’ve become a nation of skimmers and crux-extractors and sound-biters, and if you can’t produce readily skimmable, summary-box content, well, let’s hope you’re writing for The New Yorker.

We’ve also become a nation where the consumer is king. Used to be, if a company caused us pain, we might hope for some sort of compensation. Now, we expect it, because if we don’t get it we will talk about it in a forum anyone with an internet connection can access. And the consumer doesn’t only expect comps—they expect pre-comps, high-value information and/or samples in exchange for their name and email, or just their twitter handle, or nothing at all. Basically, if you want people to pay for your product, you’re going to have to woo them with freebies. (Unless you’re Apple.)

So this is why you need have a social media presence: customers expect you to have it; they expect you to respond to them on it; they expect you to give them something through it. But, you say, I’m not in marketing. I’m not in sales. I’m a developer for chrissakes. To which I say: Do you work for a company? Does your company sell something? If you don’t, do you work for yourself? Do you sell something? I thought so. You need to have a social media presence.

When you boil it down, the way you or your company sells things is through word of mouth, right? These words could be in the form of a blog post or a yelp review or a forum answer or a podcast or even good ole speech. And the way you accrue these words is by putting yourself out there, by making yourself, and your stock o’knowledge available to those who might use it. You’re a developer—you have knowledge people want in on. They don’t want marketing; they don’t want sales; they want information, straight up.

Let’s say you’re an android developer at a mobile software company, and you know Java inside out, upside down and backwards. You start blogging or tweeting about developing apps for Android, about the process and the errors you run into and the resources you use. And people start reading. They start asking questions and you start answering. Then they start linking to you and recommending you to their friends and readers. Your traffic sky-rockets, your inbound links skyrocket, and your page-rank skyrockets. And then when that huge corporation is looking for an Android app developer…they find you. They find you and your engagement, and engagement spells C-R-E-D-I-B-I-L-I-T-Y. And credibility spells S-A-L-E-S.

And that is why you, yes you need to have a social media presence. Because chances are you can’t afford not to.

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