The expanding world of social media

Well hello there! It's been a while I know, I think I'm a bit slack in the blogging scene. I get busy and I keep thinking 'I need to sit down and write a blog' but then sometimes a girl just needs a break.So much for the weekly blog, I think it's currently bi-monthly!! I'll have to try and fix that!

Anyway I've been pretty busy lately with lots of irons in the fire so to speak. Hoping that my hard work will pay off soon.

What I really wanted to chat about today is social media. It's basically taken over our world, and I don't think it's ever going away, instead it is here to stay and you need to either jump on board and keep up with it all or you are going to miss out.

The whole social media thing is a complete mine field for most people like me. I'm only in my mid thirty's and yet things have advanced so much since I was at high school and Uni it is amazing. I remember thinking fax machines were awesome! I learned to type on an electronic type writer and thought the white out key was the best thing invented (well maybe not the best, but pretty cool at the time). I also remember in year 12 when we got our own internal email accounts so we could email our friends and I said "why would you want to do that when you can just go and talk to them?"

Yet here we are 15 years or so later and we email the person at the desk next to us, we text our friends, we know what people are up to because we checked Facebook and Twitter, we can Skype or Google Chat with people from anywhere in the world, and we are never too far away from our smart phone.

In fact I heard recently that the majority of people, me included, will never have their smart phone more than 2 metres away from them at any time, it is the first thing they look at when they wake up and the last thing they look at before they go to sleep.

Kind of sad, but it's reality. We are addicted to technology, it is ruling our lives. There's an app for this and an app for that. Even my parents who are in their 60's have an ipad each. Dad got one first, and Mum was like "why would you want that?" Then she started playing around with it, so much so that Dad went out and brought her one for herself.

At the moment they're traveling around the UK and Europe with their ipads, connecting to wifi and emailing and skyping us kids to stay in touch, only because they refuse to get on Facebook.

Yet I know other 50 and 60 year olds and even older who are on Facebook and they love it because they can stay in touch with their kids and grand kids.

Then you've got people who are in the corporate world and what to know how social media works. "Can you teach me how to use Facebook?" they say. "Well not really, it's just something you have to get on, create an account and start using it and teaching yourself." The rest of us taught ourselves, it wasn't like I learned anything about social media at Uni, it wasn't about then. I learned the traditional methods of communication and marketing, and still prcatice them, realising that I also have to integrate online social media and marketing into anything I do now. That's not something I've been taught, its something I've had to teach myself, and move with the times.

It's taken over the way we all do business. From a customer service point of view I think sites like Facebook and Twitter are the way to go. People prefer to interact over those mediums than via a phone call. Then if they don't get the answer they're looking for or want to vent a frustration with your product it can go viral in an instant. Companies these days have to be so on the ball and so responsive to the needs of consumers or they are going to get left behind unable to catch up. Customer service staff need to be social media savvy, to respond to their customers in real time, in an instant of a message appearing on Facebook. Traditional PR and Communications has changed so much that it is almost a customer service role at times, which gives so much weight to the argument of up skilling customer services staff to do more than just answer the phones and deal with customers over the counter.

It is a fascinating and expanding world, and who knows where we will be in another 10, 15, 20 years time? Who would have imagined where we would be today.

Until next time, whenever that may be, be safe in cyberspace and enjoy the expanding world that is.
Take care,
Nicola.