Almost every week we read stories showing ‘how tightly connected 21st century media can whip a story into a full-on tsunami, with startling consequences for individual careers..”. Last week alone US Top commander General McChrystal found his position was unsustainable after some less eloquent remarks of his were tweeted by an ears-dropping Rolling Stone reporter. Earlier a Dutch civil action group pressed charges, which were later dropped btw, against a notorious Dutch TV-maker for what they felt a slanderous tweet followed by this morning’s news reporting a Dutch TV-presenter lost a Network contract due to one of his own ‘ironic’ tweets.

New media like Twitter not only spread news with lightning speed – the good general was fired even before the actual story broke in print – thanks to super-connected people with thousands of followers, but also demonstrates the effects of influence social media do carry. I’ve often warned clients that the Internet does not close at weekends, but new fast-paced media like Twitter have added another far more risk-carrying dimension to our 24/7 online world, which can cause a wild-fire to erupt in seconds seriously endangering, or enhancing, your brand, or like said, your personal career.

Of course, many of these dramatic examples are from people that already have great influence or high visibility in the real world and the large ordinary crowd tweeting or commenting will mostly go unnoticed. However these are serious signs that you can’t take your social media tactics too lightly and that you should prevent leaving your social media activities to unexperienced staff. Twitter and other social media alike have gained authority rapidly and can ‘make or break’ your brand within ‘seconds’.

If you haven’t already, you should consider asking your online agency to develop a social media strategy not only for your external brand communications, but also – and this might be even more important – for your internal organization. You can bet most of your organization tweets, blogs or comments privately and these activities might flash back on your organization overnight. In this super-connected sharing economy consumers have become brands and brands became consumers too. You can’t afford assuming this trendy web-savvy geek toys will pass, cause that could be a devastating mistake.