Many technology companies face a problem when creating social media friendly content (blogs, Twitter updates and so on): how do they make it chatty, fun, interesting and useful when frequently the subject matter is very technical (and the majority of the audience may necessarily not be) and therefore potentially complicated.

The problem is mainly a B2C one, but also it can be a problem with B2B audiences; just because a person is operating in a business to business capacity doesn't necessarily mean that they are technically minded, even if they are interested in or already use your products or services.

In my opinion social media is actually an opportunity to make potentially complicated subject material easier to understand. You can do this in a number of ways:

- Encourage your online community to help each other understand stuff

Use Twitter for example to grow your community, then encourage peer to peer communication in that space. This has been one of the greatest achievements of Twitter; the facility for individuals who are all following a certain company or brand to help each other. Just because you are the instigator of the group doesn't mean that the members aren't better than you at helping someone understand a product or service or iron out a problem.

Wikis are also a great way for a community to define their own terminology and also shape their own way of expressing meaning - and avoiding jargon. Encourage people in the community to get involved and create their own glossary of terms - created by the customers for the customers!

- Speak more informally (and avoid using jargon)

Social media provides an opportunity for you to talk informally, in a more chatty way about sometimes very complicated or technical products or services. It is easier to describe what something does or why it exists when you write in this way as it frees you from tone of voice, terminology and sales-led speak - and a limit in characters or words. Allow yourself to become conversational when blogging about stuff that is hard to understand; this will be a big help for people who sometimes struggle to understand your offering.

- Use other media to communicate

One of the best things about social media is that there are lots of different mediums you can choose from. Why stick to words when you can create an animation, or a video, an audio recording, or make a slideshow? Use YouTube, SlideShare, and podcasts to illustrate your offering in a more 3 dimensional way.

At the recent D&AD student awards Christian Söderholm & Dennis Rosenqvist of Hyper Island in Sweden won a First prize for their Tag iPlayer idea for the BBC. The concept is to allow users to watch media on the iPlayer as normal, but with the help of a widget they can get related, additional content through tags which can also be shared with friends. The idea is that users can find out instant information about actors, recipes and other related content.

Great idea! So how could technology companies use this type of deep video tagging concept to sell more products?

Tagging from within the video would allow technology companies to promote their products in more depth by offering links to further resources as 'asides' to the main content; in product demos for example, by adding things like user reviews, related products, more in depth information, gallery of images etc the user gets a clearer picture of the product than they would have if the video were viewed without tags. You could address the fact that people have differing levels of technical understanding by offering explanation if required. If not, great, skip the tag and go ahead with the video. As video is used more and more on e-commerce sites to show products, this type of thing is sure to become more of a requirement.