For the past couple of weeks I’ve been on hyperdrive it seems – a landslide of client and work-related events has kept my calendar full of lunches, meetings, coffee get-togethers, conference calls and cocktail parties. And aside from feeling overwhelmed and falsely popular, I had an epiphany.

As a advocate for social media and a regular speaker, tutor and blogger on the subject, my world depends increasingly on relationships formed digitally. I have made friends with people I have come to know and respect — completely online. Friendships I have enjoyed for years have grown and taken new importance through social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook, and @carondg, @prprosandiego, @jaybaer, @specialksd and the hilarious @troymjohnson have all become friends I look forward to “talking” with daily.

But here’s my epiphany — all those meetings and live conversations I’ve had recently were WAY MORE REWARDING AND ENJOYABLE – because they were live. And it jerked my chain hard.

The feeling of actually being social, without the media part, was refreshing – and it reminded me that for all my advocacy of social media marketing (and I believe in its strengths more than ever), nothing beats a good ol’ fashioned face-to-face conversation once in awhile. No digital winks, no LOL, AYFKM, WTF and #fillinwhateveryouwanthere.  Just honest facial expressions and words with meanings attached that you can read on someone’s body language.

There’s been a lot written about the ubiquity of social media tools and how we are becoming increasingly dependent on them. A lot of theorists and scholars – people way smarter than me – are engaged in dialogues about how to harness the power of social media, how to shape social media use for the common good, how to measure its effect, what it means for the future of marketing, and more.

For me, it’s more simple. Mixing social with social media is the combination that works best for me – when I can overlap real, live, in-person conversations with those 140-character bursts of spontaneity and occasional tidbits of wisdom. I like people, and I’m a sociable kinda guy.

The funny thing is — all those live, in-person meetings and conversations and musings over cocktails I enjoyed so much? All we talked about was social media the whole time.

Ironic, huh?