However, we believe now is the time for most businesses to take action on building their social media profiles and build the difficult bit - regular, useful content creation into their marketing plans.

Indeed, the useable of social media has nearly doubled in the important 35 - 54 year old age group in the past year.  Now up to 43% of this age group visits social network sites.  The figure for below 35s is 70%. [source: TNS and The Conference Board "Consumer Internet Barometer June 2009]

Absolutely, any business that does not blog must have a good reason not to.  A well written blog adds intimicy and personality to a business this breeds the most valuable thing - trust.

Brands take a long time to build but can be humbled very quickly.  Look at the recent Youtube videos of an Asda employ licking a chicken and putting back on the shelves that became headlines overnight.  Asda response (see video below) is an excellent case study of damage limitation and the story faded very quickly.

However, for other businesses the damage may be longer lasting.  Within reason, it is not so much the making of the mistake (we are all human) it is how a company responds - acknowledgement, apology and speed and quality of repairation are what matters.   To do this their needs to be strategy for monitoring of social media and a capability for responding appropriately via similar media.  For this reason (if no other) they need to have active profiles on Youtube, facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube and Twitter for starters.

WSI offers strategy development and out tasking the setting up and management of these different channels including active monitoring.  Firstly their is the look and feel of each channel (to match the brand and website) and structured development of content targeted at the audience.   The latter being time consuming and depending on the sector relatively easy to out task to copywriters with a knowledge of the medium.

Come and talks to us to find out whether taking this forward is right for you.