I remember my first contacts book – it has Buck House under B for Buckingham Palace. I thought it was just great that I had the phone number of the queen!

But this post actually reminds me more of CRM database software that companies use to track customer relations and enables you to send out mass email outs to relevant sectors. I actually bought a CRM program called Ace! http://www.program-ace.net/web/enterprise_solutions/crm/ years ago to help with doing some PR work on the side for a charity. It worked pretty well if you kept it updated.

Anyway the years have passed and Saleforce.com apparently now lead the way in CRM software. I haven’t investigated but I suspect it would work pretty well for a journalist seeking to put all her contacts into a database with keywords and other contact/relationship information.

Yes, I’m afraid I had a very particular audience in mind when I wrote that. I think there are far too many people that assume that if they attach themselves to an established brand interesting people will follow them and they will then be able to make Twitter work for them.

What I didn’t make clear, perhaps, is that the social media contact is still important. You really do need to be able to connect with people across all platforms and go to them. What I think I was trying to say is that having someone in the “people I follow” list is useful, but being a bit smarter and trying to systematise the way you store and manage those contacts seems to be a good idea.

Put simply, we’re constantly talking about how journalists can make data clearer and more useful. Why not do that with the contacts email list/twitter people you follow/contacts from forums/people who might fill out a form to find out more on your blog/people you talk to on the telephone/people you meet on the street or pub?

But social media can be an invaluable way of building your contact book. I think your phraseology was interesting – “our social media profile”, “lot of interesting people following you on Twitter”. I’d rather see “our social media networks” and “following lots of interesting people on Twitter”. One smacks of broadcast mentality – which I’m sure was not what you’re implying, but is a mindset many people in mass market media slip into very easily – the other of the sorts of use of social media tools which facilitate contact book building.

There are multiple ways of developing relationships that become the closer ones that we could count as contacts – from the phones, to face to face meetings, to vents, to introductions by colleagues – and the best reporters I’ve worked with have been as adept on developing their contacts on social networks as they are face to face.

As to doing it better, I’ve been banging on about, especially, opinion passed off as fact and misleading headlines for years but no-one at the Guardian, like the Reader’s Editor, seems to want to talk about it.

Take the front page today. Totally misleading. The prosector will not ‘decide Huhne’s career’.