Categories: Articles

H1N1 And Social Media (There Is A Connection)

Are you going to get the H1N1 vaccine?

There are many people who are very on-the-fence about this vaccine (well, actually, all vaccines). One of the better sources that persuaded me to get the shot (got mine today) was this: World Heath Organization: Safety of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 vaccines (hat-tip to Amber MacArthur). Without going into the medical and ethical discussion about vaccines, while waiting in line for my turn to get poked (and I don’t mean that in a Facebook kind of way), it got me thinking how connected Social Media and getting this vaccine are.

Let’s start with this: no, this will not be a Blog post about how something goes "viral."

You don’t get the vaccine for yourself, you get it for your community.

A couple of people have commented to me that they think if they got sick they would be able to endure it, and that the people they know got (or will get) the vaccine, so why bother? What most people fail to realize about this flu is that you don’t do it for yourself, you do it so that you can’t pass it on to other members of your community (like children, the elderly and those with chronic health problems). It’s great to think that you have a super-strong and healthy immune system and that if you get H1N1, you can ride it out, but what about those who you are in contact with who don’t have the same healthy track record that you have?

Social Media is not about what it can do for you, but rather what you can do for your community.

Those who really benefit from Social Media are usually those who put themselves second, and their community first. It’s not an easy thing to do, and it’s certainly not something that businesses do/think of intuitively. The idea behind the vaccine is to protect yourself (without question), but the greater good of removing the pandemic from our communities is the real goal.

Don’t forget your role when it comes to helping your community – whether we’re talking about health or Social Media.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.