Taking a step back and looking at the whole picture has kept iRM occupied for the past couple of weeks.  What are we attempting to accomplish?  How do we want to help people? Why do we want help people?  These were just a few questions that we wrestled with week after week.  Over the weekend after consulting with colleagues it became clear:

It’s not about iRM.

Once we took the emphasis off of ourselves things began to make a little more sense.  I firmly believe this realization is highly important when starting a new company.  As much as you would like your company to be successful it is helpful to remember that at the core should be the desire to help others by providing relevant services.

The tricky concept with providing Social Media Consulting is that you are constantly engaging in communities where it is the user who is projecting how things are impacting them. So the from the user standpoint social media is very “me” oriented, but this cannot be the case for the consultant. 

Although there is no quick fix the past month has been a great learning experience for iRM, and we look forward to fully helping others achieve their dreams.

It’s a typical Friday: long day at the office, ready for the clock to strike 5 or 6, and mentally planning your weekend.  In addition to your normal workload you have spent time updating your Facebook status, Twitter status, Loopt location, Flickr Stream, Livejournal, etc.  It has been a great week, but you wish to go offline for the weekend.  However, this nagging thought hits you, “What if I miss something cool or informative on my twitter feed or <insert your favorite social media community>?”  I find myself in this dilemma constantly.  With new social media communities launching literally every day how do you find the time to go offline?  Arguably, some people love being constantly connected;  their iPhones are always sounding an alert for an email, twitter update, etc.  While I respect those folks, there are some times that I simply need to mute the conversation.

I realized that if you’re not careful you will find yourself consumed by the almighty update or latest post.  It’s a hunger that seems to grow rapidly if not kept within boundries. That being said, it is important to engage in these various social media spaces fairly frequent, but at your own pace.  I get a rush from being a part of a thriving conversation; different ideas swirling around, and the amount of information flowing is amazing.  There are days when I’m knee deep in the Conversation Prism, while others I’m offline enjoying my other passions that don’t involve a keyboard. At the end of the day I think that in order to fully utilize the conversations that occur in social media communites you have to sometimes take a step back and let the conversation happen without you.

Putting this idea to work I realized that helping entrepreneurs tap into this unfamiliar territory was the highest priority.   I pitched this idea to a fellow colleague a couple of weeks later, and iRM was created.

What we do at iRM is not overwhelm an entrepreneur or company with countless social communities and blogspheres that they should “link to,” but rather design a Digital Ecosystem that is best suited for their brand and their vision.  The iRM Digital Ecosystem is a tailored blueprint of various social media resources that a client can utilize for brand exposure.

In coming entries we will explore in depth the pros and cons to using Social Media as a means of advertising and various resources that are available for entrepreneurs.