This is a follow-up to a conversation I had with Valeria Maltoni and the excerpt that Tom Kephart posted at New Tech Heroes about my “social media is a movement” theme.

I read that transcript of my comments and thought, “What the heck? Is this guy naïve or what?!” The whole human spirit thing can get a bit much, especially if I’m a marketer in a job that, on average, lasts 18-24 months, I don’t have time for this touchy-feely stuff! Relationships? What are those? I don’t want relationships; I want revenues.

This is the pain and agony of have two personalities, which is also the dilemma for marketing professionals right now. There is a confluence of the following:

-technology
-social cynicism
-economic anxiety
-changing business models

Marketers and sales people must feel like they are getting whiplash. In the past 15 years, they have been sold and finally bought into CRM. That means they are ingrained with the idea that everything can be measured, everything must have a return on investment (ROI), every action has an intended outcome that is tied to a specific — albeit estimated — revenue, and brand means everything.

Enter social media, with the following maxims:

-You don’t control your brand
-Give away ideas and trust you’ll get something back
-Build relationships with communities; don’t sell them

You can appreciate the skepticism on the part of businesses and those responsible for target numbers.

We agree that relationships, community, sharing, learning and giving are part of social media. Most of the current corporate culture puts marginal and varying degrees of value on these qualities. They certainly don’t have the same level of importance as, say, pipeline forecast, brand equity and profit per customer, etc.

The major unifying bond for social media is shared learning. At times that shared learning in among passionate, like-minded people building around a cause, be it political (candidate), social (SXSW) or humanitarian (frozen peas). Other times it is about learning — examples such as the social media news release or the iPhone SDK announcement come to mind.

Lastly, I believe social media is more a movement than a market because this exchange of ideas, information and the relationships it creates, regardless of how superficial, is emotionally and intellectually rewarding. It is both instantly gratifying and has potential for long-term benefits.

The movement is about pursuit of information to find either the truth or to validate your own beliefs. The movement is about the desire to connect for support or recognition of one’s self. Those elements are part of the human condition, not necessarily a critical component of commerce. Because of this, I believe social media will thrive and become routine. I also believe it may change the way business operates, but only if other aspects of the current corporate culture change to accommodate the movement characteristics of social media.