Over the past few months I’ve begun to notice something sinister in some of the social media training sessions I’ve been giving. No, it’s not Gollum sitting in the corner, but something far worse. In fact, if left unchecked it threatens to ruin the public face of some of the larger corporates we know. Indeed, it appears the F-Factor is spreading through firms like bindweed and choking their creativity.

Companies contradict themselves. In fact communications companies are often the worst at communicating. Especially the telecoms people.

Similarly, IT companies always boast that they are about agility, reacting quickly and empowering their staff to make decisions. Then they panic if a journalist even asks them for their name, job title or a photograph. Either that or they send out a hapless untrained engineer to do a 'tech' interview.