These are my first thoughts on the pros and cons of social media at the start of the Social Media Driving Licence course.
I thought the picture above illustrated how I currently see social media – there’s all sorts of different boats (representing different types of social media) going at different speeds and in use by different people at different times for different purposes while (just about!) managing to avoid crashing into each other. I guess at the moment I’m still the photographer, but by the end of the course I hope to be on one (or more) of the boats.
On the pro side:
- The ability to make connections with geographically diverse range of people with similar interests.
- Information source for current thinking.
- Idea creation & development with peers.
- You can provide information about and education on services you provide for others to find without you having to guess who specifically/individually to target it at.
- Real-time news – if there’s a ‘breaking story’ that interests you then you don’t have to wait for reports through ‘regular’ media channels.
- Employment & recruitment opportunities.
- Get information out fast
- Tools are largely free to use (ignoring time costs)
- Convenient
On the con side:
- Time: Finding time to fully use and engage with social media – and justifying that time in a work context.
- Time: Timeliness of response – e,g, feeling that there’s not enough time to compose a thoughtful answer – how long after can you respond
- Need to learn to ‘quick message’ and ‘just let it go’
- Learning a new language and ways to communicate – e.g. 140 characters max for twitter – how do you make sense in a short format feels slightly unnatural to a current non-user.
- Not a natural thing – not so much blogs but twitter
- I’m used to putting thought (perhaps too much) into composition
- People can be very quick to judge and re-act and perhaps thoughtless in response.
- Loss of control of information/privacy (this is not a major concern as common sense should govern what to share but…)
learn social 
Good list
Some good points made Mr Andrew!
I do wonder if some seemingly constant tweeters (e.g. Caitlin Moran, Graham Linehan) can now intuitively know when they type that 141st character…
Love the pic. One time in Venice I saw a boat get stuck under the Rialto. All the local waiters came out to point and laugh, a crowd gathered, the police turned up (in speedboats, natch), and eventually the boat was unwedged. Probably the Twitter equivalent would be the infamous “Ed Balls” tweet (by Ed Balls).
Thank you! I bet the police were there in best ‘posing – sunglasses on’ mode 🙂
Like the points about over-thinking and not just doing it. I think as long as you’re not tweeting or blogging anything offensive or controversial then yep you just need to go for it and not stew too much.
I love this post! Really useful, interesting and great to read too!
Very helpful list