Back in the old days, people used to gather down the social club of a Saturday to have a drink, gossip, exchange news, pass on tips and generally socialise. Well, apart from having a drink, that is exactly what people do today through the social media.

The old social club was a great place to push your products and services. But, do it in a way that intruded on the patrons’ leisure and your organisation could lose them forever. The same applies to social media networks.

It is a massive mistake to think that the social media are only used by youngsters. The literally hundreds of millions of people who belong to MySpace or FaceBook cover a huge range of demographics. Then there are sites like Mums-net, Xing, Linkedin and Sagazone which, as their names suggest, focus on business people or mothers or the fast-growing grey panther sector.

Plunge into this market without knowing exactly what you are doing and you can cause irreparable damage to your corporate reputation. Hundreds of organisations have already done so. They intruded on people’s leisure. They failed to talk the talk. They stood out. Come and hear about them.

But, do it right and there is a massive payoff. When folk down the social start saying to each other: “You know what you want to do...” the endorsement spreads like a virus. And I choose that word deliberately. The same thinking that spread those destructive viruses can be harnessed for good. Thinking virally is the win/win approach to PR through the social media.

This is the 21st century. It gets increasingly expensive to go and meet your friends, but information travels for free. As they used to say in the old days, get with the programme.