Jamie’s “it’s just a tool” post yesterday inspired me to share some thoughts on a related topic I’ve been thinking about for awhile now.  It seems to me that too much of the conversation around social technologies occurs in the marketing dimension, as if selling the association’s current offerings or inducing our members and customers to buy something is the only acceptable rationale for incorporating social media and social networking applications into our work.  This conversation is too limiting.

The revolution created by social technologies is about the flow of power from inside organizations and into the hands of individuals and the self-organized networks and communities they create.  This shift has profound implications for all phases of association work, and not just the marketing department.  Social technologies are reshaping not just the way associations engage in advocacy, certification/education, meetings, membership, publications and research, but also the underlying thinking that guides our pursuit of these activities.  Moreover, the new realities created by a global network-centric knowledge economy necessarily change the way we think about strategy, innovation and governing.  In each of these areas, the vast majority of the most exciting new ways of doing business created by social technologies have nothing to do with how we market and sell today’s products and services.

Either as a result of fear or simply a lack of understanding of what is transpiring online, we have chosen to focus the social technologies dialogue around marketing, as well as the related fields of P.R. and communications.  Without question, social tools are playing an important role in reshaping each of these disciplines, but the way we talk about them and the way we implement them encourages and reinforces the “just a tool” mindset.  And, as Jamie argues, thinking about social technologies at the level of the tool makes it much more difficult to explore and embrace their broader impact on organizations and society.

When I argue that social technologies are changing the rules of the game for associations, I don’t mean only (or even primarily) the marketing rules.  I mean association staff and volunteer leaders need to think deeply about what they want their organizations to be in the years ahead–in terms of renewed purpose, reinvented practice and radical new possibilities for value creation–and then drive the task of engaging passionate and powerful contributors in redesigning associations for the 21st century.

Originally posted @ Principled Innovation LLC