PressDr - Embrace Your Destiny: Why Twitter is Indispensable for the PR Professional | social-media

But before your turn up your nose at tweeting, check out some of these statistics. According to a new report from Edison Research, Twitter is more effective than Facebook at reaching potential customers who are engaged, interested and influencers. 49% of regular Twitter users follow companies and brands as opposed to only 16% of users on other social media outlets. On top of that, 40% plus of these users research products and provide feedback about brands through, you guessed it, Twitter.

The numbers make it clear. If you're serious about effective PR outreach, then using Twitter is a must.

But how do you start? Well, here's some ideas:

First, learn the basics. Once you've gotten your account going, start following some PR professionals such as Perfect Pitch PR, Allen Weinkrantz and Mary Lower, just to name a few. These are people who are good at what they do. So watch their tweets. How are they formatted? What kind of stuff do they share? How do they respond to followers and engage in conversations?
Find your voice. As with all social media, you'll quickly gain an online reputation once you dive in. Do you know what you want that reputation to be? Figure out what kind of information to share, what style of tweets to use. Then be consistent. If you have a team of people handling your Twitter account, make sure everyone is on the same page. While it should be a no-brainer, one bit of advice bears repeating - the misspoken tweet is the one that everyone will read. And post on their blogs. And pass on to their millions of friends. So don't let it ever get out in the first place.
Build relationships. Twitter is an avenue for two-way conversations. If you exclusively promote yourself, refuse to follow others or don't make the time to listen to how users perceive your company, then you might just want to kiss Twitter's usefulness goodbye. You'll quickly get marginalized or even, gasp, "unfollowed". How do you build relationships? That subject could be a whole post in and of itself, but in short, ask questions, share useful information and be genuine. Your Twitter followers will appreciate it.

Are you ready to take your PR work to the next level? Then take the Twitter plunge. As you learn to use this social media tool effectively, you'll discover a whole new world of influence.

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Twitter's Ridiculous Rules
written by Camden Smith

, August 10, 2010

I agree Twitter is really important as long as you have followers. I established a new username for my marketing company and made the mistake of following too many people and was flagged as aggressive because my following number did not match my "followed" number and it's been 5 days of appeals....no response.

They permanently suspended me for trying to grow my communication using legal and allowable methods. I didn't even send out tweets. What is the point of a social network with a rule that says you must have a "reasonable ratio" of followers for those you are following.

If they don't change that, I say Twitter is on the downslide. smilies/kiss.gif