One of the most common questions I hear about our Evening With Brian Solis event on July 27 is, “Why are you producing a social media education event that could end up educating your competition?”

The answer is simple … if your job is in social media, this event isn’t for you.

It’s for your clients.

Brian’s BOOK is for you. (And, if you are indeed an enterprising, social media superstar, you’ll probably read Engage whether I tell you about it or not.)

So, why educate your clients?

That answer is simple, too …. educated clients benefit us all.

Lead the camels to water.

Although many of us work in a world where we can watch watercooler debates via social feeds all day and hang with other people who whip out their phones and tweet the funny jokes they just heard, the reality is … um …. that’s not reality.

While social media is a business tool (and a powerful one at that), many businesses are still just circling it like hungry sharks nudging a surfboard to determine if it’s a seal.

This is still largely uncharted terrain. And the parts we have charted continue to shift overnight, as if someone passed a magnet over our collective strategic compass.

Each day there are new concepts to understand, new tools to explore and new resources to review.

Companies are intrigued, but they’re also seriously freaked out.

And, if you’re working in this field like we are, you’re likely seeing that, too — in the form of RFPs that get abandoned, social strategies that don’t get implemented and community managers who are jettisoned for failing to tweet their way to increased profits.

Help them take a drink.

If we’re going to be grown-up professionals and make social media a grown-up industry, it’s going to take more than 140 character oaths and Foursquare mayorships.

We’re going to need to work together to pave the way for insight and acceptance in companies of all shapes and sizes.

The more that companies “get it,” the more they’re going to realize that it takes special skills and special people to capitalize on that “it.”

I don’t know about you, but I’d like to be one of those people.

Be the ambassador.

If you’re sitting on the front lines of this industry, you’ll find much “food for thought” in Brian’s book – much of it far too deep or technical to cover in one evening talk.

Instead, our July 27 event is your chance to have someone who essentially just wrote the “how to” manual for social success make the case to your clients (and potential clients). You get to be the lucky ambassador sitting next to them who can capitalize on that excitement.

(Register using our special “bring your client” rate and you’ll be a fiscally-responsible ambassador, too.)

So, is that, “helping my competition?”

Perhaps.

Being a “social ambassador” at Brian’s presentation could mean that someday you’ll win a gig that my company is also vying for.

But, if we don’t first work together to educate companies, in the end, we all wind up losing.