It seems so obvious that social media is a good way of performing marketing communications that it’s almost not worth saying. And yet so many people keep getting it wrong – or if that sounds too strident then perhaps we could agree there are people who manage their communications in a way that really can’t be deemed helpful.

Take the candidate at a social media seminar I hosted after the launch of my first book, who was herself an author. She had been excited to note that her publisher had gone onto Twitter for the first time, and imagined her name in lights, the publisher doing everything it could to make the most of the sales of her latest novel. She logged on to find the only entry said: ‘Muriel’s just eaten three Twix.’