Antisocial media
Andy Sandford, editor of Engineering Capacity
I must confess I am rather a duffer at social media, what you might call a late adopter - writes Andy Sandford.
I am on Facebook, but I really have no idea what I am supposed to do with it or why, and seem to keep on accumulating friends – some of whom I actually know. I occasionally ‘tweet’ for the edification of my 11 or so followers, but must admit I really haven’t got the hang of that either. I think that one of the major barriers for me is that I can’t read what it says on my so-called smart phone without stopping to find and put on my reading glasses. It isn’t quite the seamless communications experience I think it is supposed to be.
I am afraid I am going to have to buck my ideas up though. More and more companies seem to be using Twitter to communicate with their customers – although it is sometimes difficult to sift the wheat of the new product development breakthrough from the chaff of whoever is ‘down the pub’ and what they are doing. Among the ones offering pure wheat is Renishaw, which now has over 1,100 followers.
Anyway, I am in danger of churning out pure chaff myself here – so let’s get to the point. None of these media offers me the same experience or ease of use as a printed magazine – especially one in Engineering Capacity’s handy and compact format. The closest contender is probably the iPad but, let me put it this way, in WH Smith the other day I saw no fewer than eight different magazines about the iPad. No, for ease of flicking through, picking up on the things that are of interest and getting a quick fix of relevant information,n the magazine still wins.
OK, I’m not really a Luddite; online information is the essential complement to the printed page – or is it vice versa – but that information has to be intermediated in a way that presents relevant and timely information in an appropriate way for its selected audience. That’s one thing that social media certainly don’t do – and one thing that professional business media companies like Mercator excel at.
The one social media tool that I have really clicked with is Linked In, which I find is a great way of networking, catching up with old contacts and getting a feel of what is going on in the market. In fact, I can wholeheartedly recommend the Engineering Capacity Linked In group; you meet some nice people there.
Andy Sandford
