“The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what makes it so powerful”

– Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard law professor and Internet expert

Just because something is new, popular and cool doesn’t make it useful nor benign. If you asked me as a “busy and serious professional person” about Twitter 12 months ago I would have told you it was clearly a frivolous outlet for procrastination and people with nothing else better to do with their time. Without wanting to sound overly critical or judgmental, inane tweets such as “I’m heading for the toilet” or “the cat just yawned” only adds fuel to this view. Used in this way, social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook are self-indulgent and not particularly useful to anyone.

I have come to discover that there are in fact many useful applications of Twitter and social media in general especially in healthcare and educational settings. These applications include but are not limited to community collaboration, service recovery, crisis communications, recruitment, education and real time news/announcements.

That’s on the plus side. However, on the negative side is the very real threat of not completely being in control of the message, breaches of patient confidentiality, bad word of mouth and loss of productivity.

A recent news article article on CNN (source) graphically illustrates how an employee’s “personal” social media use can still reflect vicariously on organisations they are affiliated with. If professional swimmers can supposedly bring the entire sport of swimming into disrepute by the posting of some racy photos on Facebook, imagine what photos of doctors drinking, grinning and brandishing guns as souvenir shots whilst on humanitarian aid missions can do to reputations and professional standings.

Ultimately, Social media channels are simply tools. Like all tools, in the right hands they can be used effectively and efficiently to achieve a desired outcome. In the wrong hands these tools can cause tremendous damage not only to the users but to those around them. This could express itself in catastrophic reputational loss leading to brand or career damage, law suits and negative commercial consequences.

Given how explosive and important social media is proving to be as a form of communication and marketing it behooves those who have dismissed it as a fad, to look at it again but much more carefully. Organisations need to consider drafting “Rules of Engagement” as far as how Social Media is to be used by employees in formal and informal settings.