Earlier this week, I did a panel about social media at the Canadian Solar Industries Association’s annual conference. Before the panel started, the attendees were asked about their Web presence. Most of them had Web sites but, surprisingly, very few of them were active on blogs, Twitter or Facebook.

It was surprising only because when you’re drinking from the fire hose of social media, it’s a head-scratcher to discover there are people not as active, enthusiastic or engaged. Then, you realize that the majority of people aren’t involved in or interested in social media, and that many of them may never get involved in social media. This is something that the digirati often fail to recognize as they happily tweet, blog and update, and talk to other enthusiasts about their tweets, blogs and updates.

This is one of the reasons that I have been spending more time recently writing and talking about the fundamentals of social media. There’s still a lot of hand-holding and educating to be done as individuals and companies move from not being on social media to thinking about social media to doing social media. It means that social media enthusiasts, consultants and strategists may have to take a step back to help pull the masses along. There’s a whole mess of people looking to get involved; all they need is some encouragement and education.