This question gets asked more and more by organisation PR people and those involved in reputation management. Like all technological developments, there's a barrier to entry. Example: You've never played a video game. You're simply not going to be able to co-ordinate the buttons, steering wheel and pedals to prevent yourself having a crashing good time on screen. This is where the so-called 'thumbs generation' does well. They approach every newly emerging widget in a spirit of enquiry, adventure and with entertainment and connectivity in mind. We need to do the same.
Not all of the Social Media mix will be for you or deliver on your communication needs. But I've blogged for a long time and that blog has become an influential and controversial part of my personal media mix. Organisations have learned painfully that you can't start a blog punting your products or services as if it's genuinely being written by an outsider. When you get busted trying to pull the wool over people's eyes, the backlash is pretty fierce.
Podcasts are serving the needs of many tech-savvy organisations across the spectrum. They're little audio files that people can click on and download or listen to there and then. The advantage is that if you miss a radio interview, these days that interview will be available a short while later on the network's website as a podcast. It's a great way of communicating short and relevant bits of audio information to your client base. I regularly get interviewed for other people's podcasts on a variety of topics. So they're using external sources with 'cred' to add to the lustre of their media mix.
Have I gone LinkedIn, MyGenius and Twitter? No - for a variety of reasons. I really can't think of anything more mind-numbing than spending time putting up my activities in 140 characters or less, as Tweets for people to 'follow' me. The tweets of some people I know are a banal embarrassment. If you're a high profile celeb or politician, heck, you'd be brain-damaged not to use it. Barack Obama did during the US Presidential primaries, to great effect.
Enter facebook I resisted the idea of using it until a conspiracy of friends swamped me with e-mails and SMSs bullying me on to it. (I'm a pushover). Now I regularly use it. It keeps me in touch with my dear ex pharmacist in Oregon in the USA and connected to all sorts of people with whom I simply don't have the time to make regular personal contact. Ditto for them I'm sure. It's even produced some unexpected work for me. As people for whom I'd done consulting work years ago take up the threads again. It's become a way of keeping in touch with all sorts of micro trends of interest to me in the work I do and also to share on many fronts with other people. That's the essence of networking. It's great to use in sometimes unproductive airport or between-meetings moments. And it needn't be just messing around. You can make it work for you.
My recommendation? Get involved with some of the Social Media at least. It can pay dividends for you and your organisation. Health warning though: It can be very addictive and time consuming if you don't use it intelligently and judiciously. But that's not a good enough reason not to use it! Finally, a confession: I've started using Twitter as well (blush).
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