Social media was an undeniable common theme at this year's SAS Global Forum, infiltrating general sessions, paper presentations, posters and conference attendee engagement.

Former editor of this blog, David Thomas, spoke at SAS Global Forum and told attendees that social media may be a phenomenon, but it’s not a fad. “It has forever changed the way people and companies communicate.”

“Some people are still saying that social media is boring, stupid and pointless,” he said. “If that’s the case, they must be following boring, stupid and pointless people and organizations in their social media activities.”

Thomas presented compelling statistics about the explosion of data and activity on popular social media channels, such as YouTube, which boasts more than 490 million viewers worldwide. “This is not just home video of a cat playing the piano,” he said. “There are some fantastic how-to videos out there from SAS users about how to perform certain functions.”

Blogs, social networking platforms, such as Facebook, and mobile services are also growing trends. But as companies get on board, understanding the impact of social media is becoming increasingly important. “Measurement is the holy grail,” Thomas said. “Everyone wants to know what benefit social media has on their business.”

Thomas provided a three-step plan to help conference attendees engage in social media for business:

1. Learn
   • Visit blogsearch.google.com and enter keywords such as "SAS." Find three or four blogs of interest to you and follow them. Don't feel you need to read them every day.
   • Visit sasCommunity.org to find featured bloggers.
   • Create Twitter lists.Communications Specialist Waynette Tubbs has three lists of users you might want to consider.
2. Share
   • Set aside a certain amount of time each day for social media activities.
   • Use what you have. Post a link you would normally share via e-mail on Twitter or break a white paper down into sections and create a blog series.
3. Connect
   • sasCommunity.org is a great place to start engaging with others online.

     Taxonomies, tone and tweetsImagine going to a grocery store that has no aisles and where all of the items in the store are piled together and disorganized. How do you shop? You have to rifle through everything to find the items on your grocery list.