The only social media advice you need

I keep thinking about How To Be Interesting, a 2006 blog post I read a few months ago. Russell Davies captured the essence of my social media strategy, what social media means to me, and why it's been so successful for me and others. If anyone ever asks me for advice in this arena, I am going to quote Davies:

...the core skill of any future creative business person will be 'being interesting'. People will employ and want to work with (and want to be with) interesting people.

Social media is a big deal because it helps you do the two things Davies recommends to cultivate that skill of "being interesting":

The way to be interesting is to be interested. You’ve got to find what’s interesting in everything, you’ve got to be good at noticing things, you’ve got to be good at listening. If you find people (and things) interesting, they’ll find you interesting. 

Interesting people are good at sharing. You can’t be interested in someone who won’t tell you anything. Being good at sharing is not the same as talking and talking and talking. It means you share your ideas, you let people play with them and you’re good at talking about them without having to talk about yourself.

It's not rocket science: social media helps you find more interesting things (such as when I found this article via Hacker News) and share them (like I'm doing with this post).