Technology is a powerful tool isn’t it for the communications industry? It’s my view that everyone now has the capacity to be a journalist because of social media networks, blogs etc and with the high speed nature of Twitter, for example, I think there is a need for us to be careful in what we use social media for.

I often see people commenting in social media adversely about a person or a brand and whilst I do believe in freedom of speech, I think we need to exert some self control and think about the impact of what it is we are saying about someone or their brand in these networks.

Just because we can have a high speed rant online, doesn’t mean it’s appropriate, does it?

I think this unleashes the necessity for us to hone our own moral codes.

Used well, social media is a superb tool to share ‘instant stuff’ about what we do/offer, what we rate, how we think and what we would love to share with our networks. I think Twitter, for example, is a super place to positively buzz about things I rate and have enjoyed. The instant nature of it is awesome as is the infinite nature of how ‘a tweet’ can be circulated so widely, and at high speed, around the world with our name on it.

With this dimension to global communications now, and clearly social media is very much here to stay, I think we need to take a step back sometimes and refine, or define, our own point of reference and moral code for how we want to use it.

Our social media communications style says a lot of about us and our reputations are on the line whether we realize it or not. Are you consciously creating your social media style that reflects you as the person your new client would actually meet in person? Let’s refine that question now to, Is your social media style helping your new clients of the future to want to find out more about you and meet you in person?

Are you putting them off with your social media style?

Are you attracting lots of new business inquiries because of your thought-through style?

Interesting isn’t it? One can spend too much time in social media I think. We have to think about the perception others’ may get from about us. Constant tweeting could be construed as an addiction, not having enough work to do and being unfocused?

I think you’ll agree, these are not great things to be thought about us, are they?

I think it’s about defining what we want to use social media for, defining our own style, establishing our moral code and being appropriate.

These past few weeks with major UK and world events have seen an extraordinary number of tweets that have broken Twitter records. I wonder how many hours of productivity are lost to ‘twittering’ and how many personal brands have been affected?

Sue Blake is the EBA PR Expert.