Being effective at social media, whether for business or personal use, means capturing people who have short attention spans. They're only a click away from a picture of a funny cat, so you have to make your thing more compelling than that cat. And that can be a high bar. Alexis Ohanian

You know that when the holiday postcard from your dear family member/ friend doesn't come through the letter box but into your inbox or onto your phone that the ways that we are communicating are changing. When even 'creaky old back-packing travelers' start to embrace different forms of social media then the times they really are a-changing (to paraphrase Bob).

And so it must be with our businesses: The Old Bakery enterprises which include The Bakehouse holiday cottage; the preserves division and the photography retail section; Gladstone Coaching - training, coaching and mentoring and linking in with The Old Bakery enterprises - Starting a B&B course and coaching retreats; and now Norfolk Patch - patchwork lessons, workshops and talks across Norfolk and quilt retreats in The Old Bakery.

Having just reduced my time with the NHS to 4 long days a week, I now have Fridays to devote to the administration and marketing of our various enterprises. I've drawn up a spreadsheet to make sure that we are organised about how we will start to use social media appropriately and regularly to increase our presence in the wider world.

We'll wait and see what impact these have but this is where you'll currently find us.

Facebook: You can find The Old Bakery and Norfolk Patch on Facebook. We mainly post photos of the B&B, the garden and the local wildlife and pictures of my quilts on Norfolk Patch. 

Twitter: We tweet at @gladstonecoaching and @norfolkpatch. Finding something to tweet about once a week is a big challenge but I'm reliably informed that we should be tweeting 4 or 5 times a day to make it worthwhile. Who knows if we'll even manage one a day and whether it will make a difference. We'll report back!

Pintrest: In case you've not come across Pintrest it is just up my street. A chance to create online photo boards that you can share with others and pin new photos that you come across onto the boards that you create. I have one in my name which is also known as Norfolk Patch - along with quilt boards, coaching quotes and various recipe boards I also have one for all things cauliflower (the wonder veg we are eating in place of rice, potatoes and anything else that is laden with calories - cauliflower wine anyone?)

LinkedIn: The professional job and networking site (the business equivalent to Facebook where you can post you CV). You'll find me here too - not that anyone has offered me a job yet!

Blogs: This blog is not one we share with our guests; although we are careful to make sure we don't talk about our guests on here in case they come across it inadvertently. I've started a blog to promote Norfolk Patch; you can read about it here: http://norfolkpatch.wordpress.com/

The next task will be to start again with my Gladstone Coaching blog - I did a few when I first left HSBC but this needs to be done regularly to be of any worth. Stuff on management, leadership, coaching etc - well I'll enjoy it and there are a few out there like me that may read it. More importantly it will enable me to provide helpful information and show what I know and that may drive business.

Wherever all this tweeting, pining and blogging takes us we need to be mindful that ...

"Good social media is authentic. What makes social media work is actually having something to say."

(Steven Levitt)