A Love Story: Social Media + Knowledge Management
Somehow they found each other in this crazy world.
Knowledge management (KM) saw social media across the room — something new and exciting. KM thought, “How will social media fit into my life? It seems so different from me. So much information coming and going at rapid speeds. I’m not sure we’ll mesh.”
Social media (SM), on the other hand, was talking to a bunch of people at the party. SM was so busy sharing ideas, photos, videos and stories that it didn’t even notice KM right away.
KM was organizing things and putting people into groups when SM approached, stopping to say lots of things to lots of people on the way over. KM stopped SM, listened to what it was saying, and started synthesizing and sharing some of SM’s messages back to others at the party. SM dropped a bunch of different resources around a specific topic, and KM picked them up and packaged them so that they could be easily accessed and understood.
And so the partnership began. Sometimes SM would spew out a lot of information, and KM would organize it and make it more useful. Other times, KM would provide information for SM to share with others. In the beginning, KM felt lonely but didn’t know what was missing. It was the social aspect of knowledge sharing, which SM easily filled. SM helped expand KM’s reach and helped KM blossom into a social butterfly. SM brought people to the center of KM’s life as opposed to just a small part.
KM is a systematic practice of collecting information and connecting people to it so they can act effectively. A large part of KM that makes it worthwhile is the people.
If KM happens and no one is there to use it, does it even matter? A fact sheet or database without someone to read it is ultimately useless. Social media helps expand the capabilities of KM and ultimately makes it better. And KM provides organization to the chaos that is SM.
And for these reasons they lived happily ever after.
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