Guest Speaker: Christy Perry

Christy Perry, being a social media expert, is a great example of the brave new world social media has opened for businesses. For one, social media has given gainful employment to those pioneers eager enough to immerse themselves in the changing fads of the online world.

It's too easy to only see the positives that social media can bring a company. It's a de facto mouthpiece for an entire organization's operations, and that can mean trouble in the hands of a human. The technology these days has made posting updates from anywhere disarmingly easy. No wonder companies have, several times, found themselves in the news for the wrong reasons as an employee treated the company Twitter account like their personal soap box. Accidentally or not. Less frequently but more troubling are the examples of incredible ignorance turned offensive, such as the American Rifleman post the morning after the Aurora shooting. Perry had many examples of these kinds of screw ups,

It’s hard to do serious damage through social media, media firestorms caused by social media controversies have all vanished from public view relatively quickly unless there was serious wrongdoing (see: Anthony Weiner). The net effect of engaging your organization with publics through social media seems positive overall, but I question how much so. I doubt there is a way to effectively quantify the financial benefits of devoting time, energy, or money of building a brand through social media. That’s especially true of small businesses that cannot necessarily afford a social media expert. Perry did not seem to have an overly compelling case for smaller businesses and organizations maintaining professional social media presences when their key publics are mostly of an age that doesn't spend much time on social media.