This morning in my Google mail inbox and Hootsuite account was a very interesting post from Chris Brogan (I get Chris’ blog posts emailed to me each morning) entitled “When all this gets cool“.  If you don’t know who Chris is, well you need to check him out.  He is one of the thought leaders in the Social Media space worldwide and has some pretty good concepts around how to use these tools to do some cool stuff.

The article from Chris talks about social media and the cool factor, what we can do online today is amazing and yes extremely cool.  This article really nails what we can do with social media tools.  Over the past few days I have been putting together a theoretical framework for Ulsitic on the entire social media landscape, this helps.

I agree with what Chris has to say about when what you can do with Social Media tools becomes cool.

Social Media is not about the tools.  Just like when I was an IT guy in Calgary, it wasn’t about the Windows 2003 server that was cool, deep down inside it wasn’t cool at all.  What was cool was how my clients could do cool things when they used the technology I set up for that or later in my IT career sold them.  I never sold a solution that didn’t fit into their business model, that wasn’t cool at all.  At the end of the day it was about the masterpieces of design they created, the ability to find petroleum products several kilometres beneath the surface of the earth or the fact that our clients could send out a press release to thousand with a click of a button.

In the Social Media world it is exactly the same thing.  Twitter, blogging, Facebook are not cool at all (well they can be a little), it is what we can do with these tools that are cool and remarkable.  The people we meet, the ideas we share and the concepts we can leverage are very cool.  On Chris’ blog he has a pretty good list on some items we can do each day to help out our community and others.  The biggest challenge I can see is finding the time or making it a priority in my day and then just doing it.

Here are just a few of them. Again I recommend you read his post at http://www.chrisbrogan.com/.

Start a public list of Twitter accounts from local businesses. Point everyone in your community to it.

Start small mastermind groups on Google Wave (I have an incredible group going. Very small. Very useful.)

Donate four hours a week to a charity, giving them more promotion and exposure for their causes, equipping them with more ways to find what they need.

Connect to 10 people every day. Make it a blend of 5 people you’ve been in touch with, and 5 people you need to stay fresh with. Ask for nothing. Offer everything. ( Tim Sanders does this well.)

On a side note, Chris is scheduled to be our guest on Ulistic’s Social Media podcast in April, visit “The Orange Files, Social Media in Canada podcast” for additional information.

What can you do today to make a difference in your community and make what you are doing online “cool”.  I guess it is time for me to finish what I start with my SW Calgary church blog site.