This time its Personal.

Last week Jason Nicholls and I did our weekly half hour  ustream show “With Onions” which covers the topics of social media, marketing and technology. For a change we had a few more viewers than the bot , then again when our numbers double we both feel like Spike Lee, but I digress.

The topic for this show was how social media will affect the recruitment process. How corporations will be making the distinction in assigning tasks and roles of communication through social media to their employees.

Chris Hambly the godfather of the Social Media Mafia , of which I am also a member , takes issue with the comments about personalities in his post following the show he explains “its the brand not the personality stupid“.  Now I should be clear here that Chris is spot on about the importance of the Brand over personalities however that issue is at a right angle to the point I was making.

The success of embracing social media depends on individuals that are not the wall flowers or the wilting violets of teams.That communicating ideas and brands requires vitality of an individual that can capture the attention and motivate teams within corporations. Chris Hamblys concerns with the comments was that the personality should not become more important than the brand, and I agree . What I find interesting here is that these concerns are the opposite of what I  see occurring in the social media sphere.

For me Brands are  defined in the perception of the audience just as much as the successes of a community managers who as  individuals become part of the communication medium for that brand. They become the spokesman defacto by way of the community preferring that persons presentation and opinions.

Its interesting to note that when I talk about the  Social Media Mafia many will say “Oh thats Chris Hambly” . If I talk about Techcrunch people talk about Micheal Arrington or Mike Butcher, If I talk about Amazon web Services we talk about Jeff Bar. My father always said, “people deal with people”, and  with Social Networks and Social media this has become easier than ever before to achieve.

Jo Jordan posted a follow up to the conversation which begins to layout the  question about how recruitment and HR will be educating themselves.

Jeremiah Yowang posted an article the following day which reflected most of the issues which I was alluding to. How corporates can be caught off guard in not managing their online social media presence. He goes onto provide a list of brands using twitter.

Oh and in regards to the title its intended as a pun and not a emotive state of mind for those whom are shall we say emotionally or ironically or humoursly challenged.

Thanks for reading.