There are 1 billion people on Facebook, so why will no one 'like' your status?

I've blogged about Facebook before, but today is a momentous day in the history of social media. Facebook passed one billion users today. That means one out of every seven people in the world is on Facebook. If Facebook was a country it would be the third largest population with over three times the people of the United States.

That's big.

I remember the presidential campaign of 2008. President Obama did a great job of connecting to potential voters through social media and the internet. The other candidates saw that and attempted to replicate his success. It fell flat because they just got online. They didn't actually take the time to engage the medium.

I was presenting to a group of people about how to use technology to communicate well and one older gentleman suggested that he could scan his hand-written notes and email them to people as a way to engage new audiences with technology. Though I applaud his attitude, his tact is a bad one.

Social media isn't an electronic version of another type of communication - it is an unique form of communication. You can't just take other content and recycle it for Facebook (or Twitter or Pinterest or your other social media site). You can't just sign up and wait for the people to come to you. You can't just post things and have conversation happen. It takes work to learn the language and culture of each social media platform so you can communicate well.

I'll offer some tips on how to really connect with people through Facebook on Friday. For right now, what have you learned about communicating online versus other forms of communication?