Social Media, is it really work?

I haven’t done any filming for a while.  There’s all sort of reasons for that, but one is I have a new job.  It’s a kinda cool job, I work in social media.  I want to say where, but one aspect of my job is that I write a social media policy, and it tells employees not to say where they work.  There’s a reason for that, some of what people write could break the data protection act, so if they can’t say it, neither can I.  I have to set an example, right?

I will say it’s a blue light emergency service, which means it’s one of four and not the AA.  They can say it as much as they want, but they are not the fourth emergency service. 

So what does my job involve?  I get to spend about 60% of my day on facebook and twitter.  It sounds like a dream right?  Wrong.  There are all sorts of reasons why it’s wrong.  Firstly, it’s work.  I’m not chatting to friends, playing dumb games or doing stupid quizzes, I’m working.  And work shouldn’t be fun, it should be work.  I’m keeping an eye on things, making sure I post stuff at the right time of day, all those things. 

Secondly, I’m having to make sure what I do post is in line with a social media policy I am still writing, for employees, press officers, CEO’s etc.  It’s a lot of pressure, it has to be right, it has to meet corporate branding, it has to apply across the board.  It also has to have sections that mean I can monitor what some people are saying, not to spy on them, as I will be making them an official branch of what I do, so they will have to meet my standards.

And my standards are kinda low it seems, I need to create new standards just for the job.

And here is the problem.  Before I started the job, I did a little bit of social media work and I was out of my depth.  I did study it a bit as part of my media degree and the one thing I know about working in social media is……no one knows how to use it in the work place. 

A lot of people write about it, call themselves experts in this or that aspect in social media, but really, all it comes down to is this.  Social Media is a branch of Public Relations and Marketing so all the usual rules apply, it just happens faster.  When you start a campaign you can see instantly how it works, what’s wrong with it, how to make it better. 

This is the biggest secret in social media, I read all the blogs (the relevant ones anyway, I’m not trying to sell anything).  Most of them are just common sense – how to avoid a bad comment bringing your business into disrepute? Simple, delete the fucker!  Should you correct bad information online? Of course you twat, it’s called public relations!  Can social media bring in more business? If you treat it as marketing it can!

See, there are no experts in social media, it really is just PR and Marketing.  And that makes me feel like a fraud sometimes, but what I do is important.  Because of what I do, I have saved one life for sure.  I have probably saved a couple more, or at least stopped some people from getting very seriously injured with a ruined life and that’s is good. 

So if I’m a fraud, are the lives I’ve saved fake?  If I can do that in 12 weeks of the job, can I be the first to make social media really make a difference for some people?  I hope so.  What I do is important.