It’s no secret that I’ve kicked back against the major social networks marketing so aggressively recently – that’s my choice. I left Facebook not only because of that, but because I was bored of the relentless repetitive posts and the lack of publishing awareness of the people I was connected to. I know that’s harsh, but even I don’t want to know everything my friends are up to, especially when the posts tend to be utopian when in reality life is not!

However, there is nothing like a little break of a couple of days by the sea in the heat to get you to think differently and to accept that the honeymoon period is over and that the whole social media sector is not just fragmenting, it’s rationalising itself. Therefore, I am going to make some changes to how I approach my social media activity. Some people will find that strange, annoying, baffling and stupid, but others will be thankful, according to the feedback I’ve been getting. Making the change was helped by several clients and people I’m connected to, who suggested it in 2011. They lauded me when I shared my thinking and said, “Thank God,” and, “At last.”

So how will I use each channel in future? 

The brain is a little like a wheel: it is a pretty ordinary thing until it is in motion. 2012 will be a year that gets that grey matter of mine in motion by challenging, pushing and progressing it. During the year, my companies will head in a slightly different direction because of the experimenting (thank you to all you guinea pigs out there) and modelling that I have worked on over the past 18 months.

I have asked the question “Why?” a lot in 2011. I have been working hard to understand the history of social and the science behind it, the impact of digital and the future of not just technologies but our changing behaviour and how that will lead to new business models and ways of working. With the amazing support of my team, we have worked arduously to refine and reshape what we do and to do it even better. Here’s what’s happening:

In almost five weeks time I will be sat on a bike cycling a near 400-mile route around Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. Needless to say I expect it to be arduous mentally and physically, however, all for a good cause, Exeter Leukaemia Fund.  Those aware of my madness have been asking what my motivation is for doing it. I don’t normally talk about it, but as by way of explaining myself I attempt to do so here. I lost my own Dad to a different form of cancer nearly 20 years ago. In fact, when I’m on the ride, it will be almost 20 years to the date when he was first diagnosed. Times flies!

Many of you unfortunately know what a life threatening diagnosis can mean. For me it was life changing. For days, weeks and months I asked the second biggest question of all; why? Then I spent time dissecting why I’d caused it. Mine was the argument we’d had five years before over who’d eaten all the biscuits in the tin! Stupid stuff!

The first time dad was in hospital, I couldn’t build up the courage to see him. I was scared I would flip out and fail him in my duty as the strong daughter he had nurtured me to be. But I got used to the wires, the constant scratching of heads by professionals and the bewilderment I felt. The roller coaster ride between hope and despair, intersected with great hilarity, because sometimes humour was the only way we could cope. I once asked him how he was feeling, his reply “Like a pin cushion in an animal laboratory” was his response characterised by a wry smile!

Now the dust has settled for a while let’s keep this simple, I detest complication! Its not a case of whether Facebook goes for an IPO, its just a matter of when. On balance it looks like the company is going to be forced to make the move legally combined with demands being placed on it by its current investors and employees. By October 2011, it will have accumulated more than 500 shareholders so under The Securities Exchange Act of 1934, it is obliged to start reporting its performance and submit a plethora of auditing. It’s candidly easier for the company to go public. Employees (there are 1400 of them) seem to be pushing hard as at present they are restricted on cashing in on their stock. And possibly more importantly, if there is a slow down in Facebook’s growth, it may be indicating its peaking. That makes sense for existing investors to sell, but makes no sense for new investors to buy stock.

Perhaps we realise now that we are not that interested in what people are having for breakfast and more interested in what they are intellectually thinking and sharing?

The honeymoon period is over! It had to happen. We are exiting a revolutionary age and entering an epoch of evolution in social media. As it becomes mainstream and brands use Facebook and Twitter to sell, it will become less novel, more familiar and, even transactional as we revert to trying to establish traditional return on investment in everything we do.

The number of brands now following me is unnerving; I thought social was about people? The amount of systemisation scares me; the more you contrive something the more you suck the life out of it. Brands would do well to remember, technology is meant to take over the mundane processes we don’t want to do, that allows us to spend more time interacting with each other. The fear factor is social medias inevitable slide towards becoming a commodity for a great number of us.

Despite the rumours we still have to work for our supper. You don’t do social media, you are social media and that means investment. Marketing just got labour intensive and for those complaining about the lack of time, well sorry tough. The clue is in the title; social.

Building a website, constructing a blog, creating a Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube and Twitter page all free from a cash perspective. How jolly! However, the jubilation can stop there! Social means communicative, cordial, informative, pleasant, organised, popular, polite and public. That takes time, effort and energy. Those that complain that they haven’t the time to write a blog, share content or engage are, speaking candidly, lacking in imagination, or it’s just too much like hard work and/or the fear of change factor is kicking in. As with classic marketing, we had to find the cash to pay for the advert, direct mail, brochure, website or agency to carry out the work on our behalf. Now it’s less about the cash and more about the time. Time to spend online interacting, time to curate information useful for a community, time to build an amazing community around our intellect, because our products don’t matter as much as they used to.

And for those who think they can just sub it out again to an agency. Think again and again. Social media is not about automation, we’ve complained about that enough within traditional fields of communication. For the record I’m not against automated delivery but I’m completely against automated responses! There I’ve said it!