It might sound like a daft question but social media can be very time intensive, even in a passive, consuming form – reading Twitter lists, checking up on accounts, reading blogs, checking RSS feeds, commenting, Facebooking, listening/watching podcasts – and that’s just for clients before you actually consider your own social media footprint/activities.

So the question is this: how long per day do you spend consuming social media and how to do you manage it round your other activites? We’ll put our details in the comments below later on but we were wondering how/what others do after a tweet chat involving Allan Barr, Dan Frydman, Mike McGrail and Michelle Rodger.

Thanks to Stephen Penman, who has agreed to come along and speak about how North Lanarkshire Council has used Twitter, the next Scottish Social Media Dinner on Thursday, Feb 17, 6.30pm at Urban Pind in Glasgow, but before we kick off the event, there’s probably a few changes to the dinners that need to be addressed:

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Social Media hub (for many anyway) Facebook has announced changes to the site, including considerable changes to Pages that will keep most social media operators – in Scotland and elsewhere – working through the weekend to update policies and so on.

One of the changes means you can post – as a Page – anywhere on Facebook (so, for example, I can post as Whyte & Mackay instead of Craig McGill) but I’m not the only admin there, so how do firms keep a track of who said what?
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A few things popped this into my head: seeing a chap I know comment that now he’s working properly in social media he has less time to tweet/Facebook his own stuff and others asking me at various training events how often you should be online/when you can be offline.

Here’s the modern-day reality: if you’re taking social media seriously Monday-Friday 9-5 just doesn’t cut it. That doesn’t mean you have to be a slave to the keyboard though. What you may need is an ex-smoker…
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The independent PR scene in Scotland has just had a welcome addition with the set up of CranComms, a bespoke agency set up by ex-Shelter PR supremo Christina Cran.

Now Christina has always worn her heart on her sleeve, making her not only one of Scotland’s most ethical PRs but one of the most honest and trustworthy and she’s taken that ethos to heart with her new venture, offering a freemium service to third-sector parties.

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A theme I’ve spotted in a lot of social media presentations recently is that there’s a claim being made that the ever-mythical they - that group out there that marketeers, PRs, politicians and everyone else wants to reach – want relationships. Just as we’re no longer about print or TV content/ads (nonsense) or just providing PR (nonsense), it’s now about the relationship. Content was 2010, 2011 is relationships.

To which I say, if that’s the case someone’s divorced from reality.
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Last week was great interesting for the professional services in terms of social media – we were asking if banks should use social media, then there was Twittergate with the legal profession (this is the comprehensive must-read on that) and late Friday pm, an Edinburgh/Glasgow HR company saw financial details – which weren’t flattering – thrown up on LinkedIn.

And given the state of the accounts, it’s a bit of a PR disaster. So how do they get out of this?

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An agency carried out a survey of the activity on Twitter by the top 50 legal brands, published a report on it and did some PR around it, calling A&O the best Tweagles out there (oh come on, that’s a Twitter word mashup too far surely?). But it’s caused, as they say in Scotland, a bit of a social media stushie. It’s already been given the ‘gate’ suffix (and that’s when you know you’ve arrived).

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Today’s the day when lots of Scottish companies return back to work, so to help them ease back in (and because we were quite decent in our 2010 social media predictions), here’s some thoughts – over two posts – on what may pop up in social media over the coming months., so feel free to go get that cup of tea and delay checking your inbox for another ten minutes…

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Mince pie? I’m eating humble pie right now. Anyway, a quick PR Friday funny for you – and a lesson for some PRs too!

Contently has a client at the moment – the very funny and interesting Michael Howell, who recently brought out his debut technothriller novel The Christmas Virus and then, not long after making a digital version available for Kindle, iPad, iPhone and so on, sold the movie rights for a very healthy five-figure sum.

As an author myself, I know that’s one of the dreams so I was delighted to be able to help him spread his good news and success.

Off goes a press release with little comeback. Strange, thinks I. I know some people got it – they replied and we’ve set some stuff up – but others, that I would have called bankers, didn’t. It was doubly strange as the book’s co-lead is a feisty female journalist, which I thought gave it some more relevancy and appeal to the press (as well as being a journalistic stocking filler).

So I makes some phone calls – very unusual for me as I know how busy journalists are – and quite a few say they haven’t got it. Sends again, no joy.

And then one very kind soul – who is getting a bottle of whisky for their trouble – finds out what it is. Due to the phrase ‘The Christmas Virus’ being in the header and text, complete with links mentioning the same (as well as some extra bit.ly links) and my hosting/email coming from outwith the UK, many a journalist’s IT setup has seen this and went ‘no chance is that getting through’ and has done what good filtering software should and nuked it before the reporter ever saw it.

So the lessons are that sometimes phone calls are still very, very handy and that virus is not a handy word to have in a subject heading.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to make sure Mike’s next book doesn’t have .exe in the title… and buy a fax machine.