Social media such as Twitter and Facebook were put on trial by a panel of experts at Norwood’s inaugural Women in Business Breakfast this morning. Women from a wide variety of industries gathered at the City offices of Reed Smith LLP for the event, which is the first Norwood event of its kind and raised over £5,000 for the Charity’s work with people with learning disabilities, and children and families in need.
The highlight of the fundraising and networking breakfast was a discussion featuring Sherry Coutu, a member of LinkedIn and Zoopla’s advisory boards, Carrie Longton, co-founder of Mumsnet, Camilla Wright, founder of Popbitch, and Emma Barnett, digital media editor of the Daily Telegraph. Their discussion was moderated by Sky News presenter Samantha Simmonds.
Discussing the benefits and risks of social and digital media for female professionals, Sherry Coutu and her fellow panellists urged caution about mixing the professional and personal profile and leaving an extensive and sometimes incriminating ‘trail of information’ online. However, Camilla Wright said that for some celebrities there were definite benefits to creating an authentic warts and all profile through social media, citing Lily Allen as an example.
Carrie Longton revealed that Mumsnet tried to stay as close as possible to its ‘grassroots’ and how its advertising and campaigning strategies were based on this philosophy, to the extent that it will not accept advertising from Nestle. Meanwhile, Emma Barnett spoke about growing trends within social media and how individuals were creating their own personal online brand in order to aid their professional development. “Unfortunately, this has led to a horrible culture of vanity where people use status updates to say things online that they would never say out loud,” she said.
The panel also responded to questions from the audience, including whether a saturation point had been reached and if businesses faced greater risks to their brand due to the amount of information available online. Answering the latter, the panellists said it provided an opportunity for companies to respond in real time to customer dissatisfaction and on some occasions could be useful as a type of focus group. Sherry Coutu said: “It’s now a conversation. If you’re getting negative feedback you need to engage with it.”
Fionnuala Lynch, counsel at Reed Smith and member of the Women in Business Committee, said: “We are incredibly pleased with the success of the inaugural Women in Business Breakfast. Our panel of experts provided us with a lively and extremely interesting discussion and we are very grateful for their support. We would also like to thank Reed Smith LLP for donating the venue and to our guests for helping us to raise vital funds for the thousands of vulnerable people who rely on Norwood’s support each year.”
To see the debate in full, visit www.twitter.com/norwooduk
