Like most people these days I have a twitter account and a facebook account. It took me a while to understand Twitter, and why would you want to update your status with such dull randomness, ‘Standing at the bus stop waiting for the 63, it’s late again’ – although that is where you are in your life at that very moment, its not breaking or even interesting news, because of that I didn’t update my status often.

Then at an Investor Relations Society presentation last year, the presenter Andy Rivett-Carnac , of Cantos enlightened the audience on the uses of social media accounts for improved business communications, one point that sticks in my head was that if you are going to tweet, make it useful – and link to reports, presentations where relevant, don’t just explain how you are, or feeling. There were so many ideas in my head after that about how we could use social media for our clients. I returned to the office, renewed my twitter account, and started using it for research and business. I wanted to know more.

Its now almost a year since that IR Society presentation and I still use my twitter account for research for best practice on web development and social media, but what I am also finding is that there is a lot of duplicated information.

Everyone seems to have jumped on the social media band wagon and can now express their views on how to improve your online communications, and whether social media is worth it (see Does Social Media Have a Place in Investor Communications). In my eyes (and here I am writing a blog about it!), its got the point where I am finding it all rather confusing.

For instance, Inspire Mag has an article – Business Writing for the web: 27 ways to write better. Whilst reading this I realised that not all of it is aimed at the web, some is aimed at internal communications, and pretty much all of it is common sense:

1. What do you want your reader to do?…
2. Know your audience?…

It could be that this article is aimed at the less experienced copy writer. There are other organisations that promote clearer communications on websites, such as Plain English Campaign, their aim is to encourage organisations to reduce the amount of jargon used on public documents. Jargon is not needed, and leads to larger problems when website users don’t understand the content.

There are also the blogs regarding online communication policies that need to be updated should a company engage in social media activities. You hear horror stories of where employees have published damaging information and action has had to be taken. There is also the responsibility of updating the social media account, for instance there is always the argument regarding the responsibility of corporate websites –  who takes ownership, is it marketing or the Investor relations team? The same applies for the social media accounts, clearly more than 1 can be set up, but you need to be careful about the messages that are released, and ensure that they are not conflicting.

I’m of the generation that still (just) remembers the old analogue dial phone, when Amstrad were competing against Commodore, and computer games took 10-30mins to load. I think back to those times, the cold winters and summers that always included a drought in the south east, and wonder how on earth did we survive without mobile phones, which now are mini computers in themselves, email, computers, the internet, social media sites – where I can update my status to let all my friends know what I am doing because its easier than calling them?

That’s the answer really isn’t it – its easier than calling. In one quick tap, and push of an update button you can inform your friends or followers, what you are thinking, doing, or of something interesting you have found. Is this then a form of laziness? I’m thinking not – what we have here is a way to increase productivity – stick with me – as a society, there seems to be more pressure on us to work longer hours, away from home, and within those working hours we tend to be multitasking, our minds are incredibly busy, and when we are not working our minds are drained, and all we can do is watch re-runs of Top Gear on Dave, long phone conversations, or even writing letters shouldn’t be attempted in this state. So a quick update to your social media account is about all we can manage. However from a business point of view is it easier? Personally I think it adds to the workload….. asking an employee to update a twitter feed, and / or facebook account to co-incide with the release of an RNS, its a precise operation in itself!

I can understand that companies wish to reach a wider audience, and can also conduct live chats via the sites, however, as you will find written all over the web, plc’s need to be careful of releasing such information on a social media site that is not on their website see IR Web Report – Investor relations can no longer ignore social media compliance risks by Dominic Jones – going back to the point made about Communication policies.

I’ve gone off on a tangent here; I was looking at repetitive information on the web regarding social media. How do you sift through it all, how do you know which of it is right for you and your business? This may be why (and this is only my assumption), many companies are getting it wrong – they are rushing ahead, and not planning what they are going to be doing with the accounts, who is going to be managing them and what type of information should be released.

I can only say that if you are thinking about setting up a social media account for you business think about the above, but also do a little research into your competitors, how are they managing their clients/investors through online channels. Do some research using the web but don’t get bogged down by the information – there is a lot of it. The hard part is getting friends or followers – I’ve been on twitter for over a year now and only have 23 followers, and half of them don’t tweet regularly. I, however, am not obsessed about the number of followers I have, as I don’t use twitter as a way of expressing my views, more of finding out useful information. The article To Tweet Or Not To Tweet has some tips on how to market your social media accounts.  Clearly, if you have a website advertising the links on there, it would be obvious.

We have a new fad of social media (well actually its been around for a while now, but companies are now engaging with it), the world is now a smaller place are we potentially moving to an environment where we will all be wanting popular and famous, like dystopia society Ben Elton wrote of in ‘Blind Faith’, where everyone has a blog that they have to update, and nothing is considered private any more?

Where is the band wagon going to take us next….? We now have geographic tagging through use of apps, and android phones – you don’t even need to text your mates to let them know where you are, just take a photo, and upload it to the web. What new technologies will be coming in now to make the world even smaller or it is now about touch screens and faster broadband speeds? Are we going to be asking our CEOs and Chairmen to conduct live online chats, much like the BBC do with celebrities?

They’ve (whoever they are) have always said that big brother is watching, possibly now more than ever, and with the increase of use in social media and blogging we can all be journalists, writers and ultimately famous. Have you noticed how mobile phones started out really large, then as the technology improved they got smaller, now as we are starting to use them for internet access they are getting larger again?

To summarise this blog, is there too much information out there? Information these days is more accessible. We live in a virtual world where libraries can be bought into our own homes through the striking of a few keys, the trick is sifting through all the information and making sense of it.