In the fourth instalment of our 'Going social' series in our monthly online magazine Insight, CIMAsphere blogger and FCMA Linda Cheung weighs up the merits of Twitter over email. Could 'microblogging" services like Twitter usurp the centrality of email to business by offering a more effective communication toolset?

As a software start-up building on the Azure cloud, we’re part of the Microsoft BizSpark community. At their last event, there was live video streaming and Twitter interaction throughout. You didn’t need to be in the room to be part of the event and its conversations.

Especially if you’re a control-freak perfectionist and incredibly nervous before it. I’m referring, of course, to my first BBC appearance – with Phil Gayle on BBC Radio Berkshire, although you’d be forgiven for thinking Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight based on my anxiety!

As a blue-chip escapee I’ve grown up with corporate communication departments. As a start-up, there are no people, policies or procedures in place.
 

What did I learn from Hugh Dennis about business? Yes, British radio and television’s Hugh Dennis… one half of Punt & Dennis, team captain in Mock the Week and star of Outnumbered.

Rather different from the bullet point slides I’ve been happily using, as recently as last week (Business use of Web 2.0 technologies to a local CIMA branch, thanks for asking).  It's far more effective to use images or metaphors, as all the speakers did at a cracking conference on social media I attended just a few days later. 

Apparently using images can more than treble your audience’s recall of your presentation, because human memories are both visual and verbal.  Therefore to fix a memory in both systems, you need to use both images and words.