I presented alongside a law firm today in Dublin on Social media, I gave the introduction to social media and they spoke about the legal challenges that social media seems to present.

I spoke about all the positive effects social media can have on:

Your brand - using blogs, video and other ways to humanise your brand especially for the next generation

Selling: how through referrals by others as well as an availability of data online can really help firms sell and improve their customer service.

Recruiting - how it can be a great tool for building a recruitment pipeline.

While I truly believe this and the importance of your employment brand as the first step in recruitment there is no doubt that most employers are still stuck in the fear and concern stage and the issues that social media may cause.

When I listened to many of the concerns, they were points such as bullying on facebook, using facebook during working hours, downloading company databases to personal linkedin accounts. While these are all valid, these issues all existed prior to social media - they are bullying, ineffective work practices and stealing IP/ clients. So please can people stop referring to all these issues as social media issues as they are business issues.

Don't get me wrong there are some real questions around ownership of followers on twitter (there is a case currently Eagle vs Edcomm in the U.S. on this) and who owns what data and what is appropriate practice and policy - but let's try to separate issues that have always been there and new issues that have come about because of this technology change.

Kids under 15 don't wear watches anymore as "they only do one thing" they are used to multi-functional devices, they are the future, social media is only going to proliferate more. So get informed or otherwise picture the scene of your dad staring at the VHS / DVD wire and asking you to do it because he does not understand this new technology - as that's where you are headed!

Peter Cosgrove