Recently I took a long weekend with my wife. We went to Charleston. The one in South Carolina, not West Virginia.
I hadn’t been to Charleston in quite a while. When I was a young pup practically out of college, the company I worked for then sent me to Charleston to open up a new district for them. I was tasked with setting up operations and hiring management staff. I almost hired myself for the manager’s job in Charleston, but for a variety of reasons, I didn’t. Shucks. It would’ve been a great life but, alas, had I stayed I probably would have never met my wife and that would have made life in paradise that much less sweet.
Rich at the College of Charleston graduation.
Upon my recent return I fell in love with the place all over again. This time I had the best of both worlds, my wife was with me. She’s been around the world literally twice, but she had never been to Charleston. She agreed with my feelings about the place. I’ve traveled to a lot of great places in the U.S. Hawaii, Alaska, California, Florida, Chicago (yes, Chicago is great). Coronado, CA was spectacular. But I’m afraid Coronado that you’ve been bumped by Charleston.
But relative to this blog and social media is that the people in Charleston are social, very social. And they use the original social medium; they chat with you.
My wife and I were walking along the seawall at the city’s battery area, a nice park at the foot of the peninsula on which Charleston sits. There were several guys there fishing. Poles leaning on the seawall railing, lines extended into the bay, hoping for dinner. Now, I say dinner because these guys didn’t appear to be the kind of folks who do this for sport. No, these guys appeared to fish for a living. Their living. But to a one, they each greeted us as we walked by and one even wished my wife “Happy Mother’s Day.” (It was the Friday before Mother’s Day.) I’ve got a life size picture of folks in New Jersey doing this, he states sarcastically. No, the only greeting I got when I returned to New Jersey was some panhandler at EWR asked me for $20 bucks to get his car out of impound. C’mon. I’ve heard that one before.
This wasn’t a singular occurrence either. There were others that were similar.
So, my point is that if you can just think of social media, especially using social media in business, as a conversation starter, like those guys fishing on the seawall, then life could be a lot sweeter.
Except for that panhandler at EWR.
