The power of social media

I hate to say 'I told you so', but the story hitting the headlines yesterday about Paris Brown, Britain's first youth and crime commissioner and her use of tweets and facebook posts is a salutory tale for young people and those new to social media everywhere.

Social media is a powerful communications tool, but as I lectured my 13 year old when he first got set up on facebook, you should never put up a post that you'd be ashamed of later; or, in his case, that he wouldn't want his mother to read!  Somehow people easily forget that what they type into their phone or PC as a post or tweet will actually be read by others ... sometimes by employers or future employers, or for those in public facing appointments, by the man on the street.  Once you've hit that button your tweet or post is in the public domain, can be complex and sometimes impossible to eradicate and can very easily reach the eyes of those you'd rather it hadn't.

In our work, social media is vital; it is a very friendly, personal way of interacting with our customers or our clients' customers and it's really useful for communicating all sorts of messages.  However, with power comes responsibility; the positives of this story are that it might just make a few people think more about that responsibility...