Home topics news News News Social media policy or social media ban? Hamish Anderson August 12, 2011 It will come as no surprise to anyone when I say; in the last 2-3 years social media has shifted the marketing paradigm ; from pure content delivery to one of active consumer engagement. This has been driven by the need to maintain relevancy within the market which is consuming more and more social media. Consider that in any 2 hours of 2010, on average: 25,000 new users joined Twitter 5.4 million tweets were sent 5 million new status updates were published on Facebook 1.6 million Facebook applications were installed 167 million videos on YouTube were viewed Whilst the tide of social media has developed well publicised momentum, many small and medium sized companies have failed to consider what it truly means for their business. Not from a marketing perspective, but rather from a hidden cost perspective. That is, many have not considered and planned for the way social media impacts their business internally. A Blanket Approach For many small and medium sized businesses, a real conundrum exists. Whilst they want to support their customers and communicate with them online, at the same time, many want to curtail and control their staff spending ‘work time’ on social platforms. They fail to see the irony in this, however, generally their rationale is pretty simple: They don’t want their productivity to drop as it costs the company financially. In this instance many take what seems