There is no use trying to avoid it. Whether you are 9 or 90, social media is all around us. We truly are now living in the digital age with Buckingham Palace on Facebook and Pope Francis on Twitter and every celebration and commiseration re-tweeted for the whole world to see. Being in my 30’s now, I remember when I was a child that something being viral meant the doctors didn’t really know what was wrong with you. These days it’s a sign that your views, stories or opinions have raced across the world – for good or for bad. But what does it mean for our businesses on a real level?

A 2009 survey by IT services group Morse opined that staff who use Twitter or other social networking sites while at work are costing UK businesses £1.38 billion every year and in 2010, a My Job Group survey reported that 33% of those involved admitted to having spoken negatively about their workplace, with 19% of those criticising the boss or owner of the business and 13% criticising peers. Startling statistics but they have to be balanced with the obvious benefits of such a wide reaching marketing tool.

Twitter, for example, first launched in 2006 and this year had clocked up 645,750,000 users registered worldwide. This is phenomenal growth, and a wider captive audience than you could get almost anywhere else. Similarly, LinkedIn, which is widely accepted as the go-to business networking tool, had more than 350 million registered users as of April 2015, acquiring two new members per second!

It is, in my opinion, impossible to stand on either side of the fence with social media. There is good and bad in all of it, so my advice is to know the facts and prepare your business. Make sure that social media, your business and your biggest marketing team – your staff, are working together in harmony.

Over the coming weeks, I will be publishing a series of blogs which will take a closer look at the good, the bad and the ugly of social media specifically focusing on how it can affect business and employment and what you can do to make it work for you. Watch this space!