So, this social media stuff. How exactly does it fit into the journalist's working day? It's as important as a call to the police voicebank or the fire station used to be back in the day, it seems.

by Anne Alexander

Four years ago when I joined Twitter, I only did so in order to use it as a device for a TV package I was doing for the BBC about how British politicians were using social media.

In my piece to camera, where I pretended to tweet from my new account, I basically said they were all a bit rubbish compared to Barack Obama who'd won the 2008 election off the back of a ground breaking social media campaign.

Apart from a few savvy pioneers at Westminster, that was mostly true back then. But how things have changed. And not just for politicians but also for journalists like me.

Social media is so useful for helping us to do our jobs I wonder how we coped before.

Here are five ways I use social media.