Social media - a waste of time? 12th February 2013 11:44 AM
Dohh, just answered Barneys post along similar lines, so shall paste in the same 
“I still believe we are in the frontier mode of Social Media, and it's naturally evolving as people use it. It's starting to shift from kids chatting on FB, to middleaged peeps like me nosing on former colleagues and mates and seeing what they are doing now, and is now slowly moving towards a business focus.
But for every example of a business gaining benefit, there are a 1000 examples of businesses that are just wasting there time.
...I think Google may have finally got things going in the right direction with their recent Google Communities feature.
...does it enhance your online profile? Does this help with reputation management? I think this is where social media is heading business wise. Businesses will use SM to be seen and can interact with an audience, including turning round any negative experiences, who in turn will draw their own conclusions from what they read and perceive to know about a certain business. Things like reviews and reputation management will reinforce the same messages, but will require time and resource to manage.
The amount of effort and time spent on it will vary on the size, type and attitude of the business.
I think there's still a long way to go, but using me and my caravan on a bank holiday as an analogy, I think Social Networking is kind of sit in the middle lane, and see which way the traffic is going, letting the flash harries race up the fast lane, but not sat in the hard shoulder and then playing catch up
Does anybody even use Google+?”
But for every example of a business gaining benefit, there are a 1000 examples of businesses that are just wasting there time.
...I think Google may have finally got things going in the right direction with their recent Google Communities feature.
...does it enhance your online profile? Does this help with reputation management? I think this is where social media is heading business wise. Businesses will use SM to be seen and can interact with an audience, including turning round any negative experiences, who in turn will draw their own conclusions from what they read and perceive to know about a certain business. Things like reviews and reputation management will reinforce the same messages, but will require time and resource to manage.
The amount of effort and time spent on it will vary on the size, type and attitude of the business.
I think there's still a long way to go, but using me and my caravan on a bank holiday as an analogy, I think Social Networking is kind of sit in the middle lane, and see which way the traffic is going, letting the flash harries race up the fast lane, but not sat in the hard shoulder and then playing catch up
Does anybody even use Google+?”
