Social media is here and senior leaders the length and breadth of the country are embracing it.

But how many have stopped to think about what they want, whether Twitter will get it for them and what the risks are.

First, outcomes. The first goal seems to be: get as many followers as possible. Size matters, as always. What then? What outcomes real really matter? Followers are not necessarily geographically specific. Nor are they of a particular type. They may be journalists looking for flaws in the global messaging strategy. Or simply followers of important people – groupies, if you will.

If one is not clear about why one is tweeting, why is one tweeting?

Second, having secured more followers than their competitive peers, they now have to feed the beast. Twitter, like all media, demands content. Keep the followers engaged and interested. They may unfollow. Easier said than done.

Some achieve this by retweeting others’ interesting comments. Others share the banality of their daily life with the world. It becomes no less banal for the sharing but occasionally seems surreal. Others scour the web for interesting stuff with which to entertain the troops. Every day: I need to find something interesting.

So far, so what?

Time is being eaten up and we’re obsessing about stuff that were we never to encounter it would leave us none the poorer.

Third, what of the impact on their brand – what they mean to the world? In one sense, as a tweeter, to many, they are the sum of the all the tweets they have sent out over time, particularly if their followers have no other information input against which to cross-check their communication.

Are they happy with their output? Have they even reviewed it? Do they invite feedback – a how does this make you feel about me tweet-question?

The good thing about twitter is that it’s activity. It creates the sense that we’re actually doing something. It’s the best kind of doing since it involves very little effort. Look at all these tweets – what a day!

But in overall outcome terms it adds tons of risk with few potential benefits.

Risks: one might say something not thought through, betray a confidence, create a hostage to fortune, utter unutterable things, show a side of yourself that you’d rather hide. There are so many.

Benefits: one might get more followers, one might be retweeted, people will get to know us (but not really).

Oh yes. People will become informed – but only in 140 characters. Even Marx couldn’t change lives in 140 characters.

Maybe the best way to tackle social media is to be anti-social and to rely upon planned communication and face-to-face interventions.  And leave the social media to those with less control over their output.  Mr. Lincoln once said: better to remain silent and be thought a fool…Prophetic words indeed.