Ryan Holmes Social Quotations

During the early days of HootSuite, when social media was still seen as a fad, I made the decision to treat our funding as if it were my personal bank account. That's not to say I blew it on fast cars and fancy dinners. Exactly the opposite.

Importantly, companies are using social media to do things that go way beyond just chatting up existing customers on Facebook. Sales departments use social to nurture leads and close sales. HR posts job openings and vets applicants. Community and support squads mine networks, blogs and forums with deep listening tools.

Working with lots of old media clients, I've had a front-row seat on the ascension of new social players and the decline of traditional news outlets. And it's clear to me that old media has an awful lot to learn from social media, in particular in five key areas: relevance, distribution, velocity, monetization, and user experience.

No surprise that, as companies have adopted social media en masse, demand for software and applications to manage and monitor social use has exploded.

The point is that instead of a monolithic brick of printed content - delivered more or less unchanged to all subscribers - social media offers news that is personalized and nimble.

For some people, staying grounded means doing yoga. For others, it's spending time with family. Social media, too, can be a lifesaver.

Social media teams tend to be decentralized - a motley mix of in-house experts, off-site consultants and international partners. The result: Confusion, rogue tweets, and off-message posts are almost inevitable. The worst gaffes live on in social media infamy.

Sales teams use social media to generate leads and track clients as they move through the sales funnel. Operations and distribution teams forecast supply chains, while research and development squads brainstorm product ideas.

As social is where consumers' eyeballs are, businesses must take ownership of their online company profiles. By providing their customers with a place to share content, social media managers can monitor and track content which directly relates to their brand.

For an older generation of employees, social media often remains misunderstood and underutilized.

One of the ironies of a conference dedicated to all things digital and virtual is that the best ways to connect with people are surprisingly old-school. Social media tools can improve the odds of a serendipitous encounter at SXSW, but old-fashioned hustle, palm-pressing and - above all - creativity go a long way.

I'd like to think my company HootSuite is anything but a stodgy old-boys' club. As a social media company, our employees are by and large young, progressive and open-minded.

Since social networks gained popularity extremely rapidly, there had been a debate as to whether social media was a fad. There are countless pieces of evidence now proving the contrary, among them the explosion in Twitter growth and Facebook's public listing.

From its humble origins in college dorm rooms, social media has quietly crept into the boardroom.

Payfirma has revolutionized the payment process, consolidating mobile, e-commerce and in-store payments under a single solution, much like HootSuite did for social media.

While consumer social like Facebook and Twitter gets the headlines, perhaps the greatest untapped potential for social networking lies in business applications.

While social media skills were once a 'nice-to-have,' accreditation in the space is becoming a requirement for many of these job titles. Hiring managers and job seekers are realizing that printing stacks of resumes is turning passe, and social media is rising as the new way of generating real-time networking opportunities.

Customer service teams at many companies have already embraced social media, often out of necessity.

Sales departments use social to nurture leads and close sales. HR posts job openings and vets applicants. Community and support squads mine networks, blogs and forums with deep listening tools.

Social media, for all of its limitations, is rarely irrelevant. The stream of updates on your Facebook page, for instance, is algorithmically engineered to be darn-near irresistible.

Social media has given companies access to unprecedented amounts of information on client behavior and preferences - so-called Big Data. But making sense of it all and turning it into actionable policy has been elusive.

Social media listening tools make it easy to track brand references and mentions, and these functions can still be handled ably by a small, dedicated team.

By allowing multiple partners to contribute, an open platform can nurture an entire ecosystem of developers and apps. Good products integrate and become great products. Users get a one-stop solution for social needs.

Certification programs for social media are blossoming as a response to the demand for more social media training. Both industry professionals and recent graduates are tapping into tactical training programs to help them stay up to date as the industry grows.

By monitoring the activity taking place on social networks, retailers can amplify successful marketing and sales strategies and avoid weak tactics which can later be tied back to organizational objectives.

The growing role of enterprise social media, plus the growing budgets and authority of CMOs entrusted with choosing the best platforms, translates into an exciting future for apps that harness social potential for large companies.

A swarm of new business tools coming to phones and desktops near you promise to boost efficiency and streamline collaboration by borrowing social features from the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

Amongst high unemployment rates, a competitive job market and a shrinking global economy, the emerging social media industry only continues to grow.