The rise of Twitter as a powerful social media tool as seen its deployment in a wide variety of marketing, journalism, and propaganda campaigns. Recently many companies have also begun to use Twitter as a Public Relations tool. From real time communication to brand reputation, Twitter can be used for public relations, but only if your PR team is wise and careful. Here are three factors to keep in mind:

Twitter creates a real-time dialogue without taking on dangerous newscasts

Almost like having your own global LP Chat software, Twitter creates a running dialogue with the world that can be updated so rapidly it begins to take on characteristics of real time communication. This can be extremely beneficial for time-sensitive events related to product releases, political campaigns, and even international stock market tips. With the world more connected than ever, the ability to spread information efficiently and instantaneously allows companies and public entities to address issues concurrently with network news cycles. Continue reading

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Those of us following the entertainment scene even remotely, know about the entire scandal rocking the Hollywood scene between Charlie Sheen and “Two and a Half Men” producers and broadcasters, CBS, Warner Bros., and Chuck Lorre. It’s all been a crazy mess of wild accusations, crazy ramblings and failed attempts to funny statements. The entire scandal led to the popular comedy show being canceled, Sheen’s publicist resigning and hordes of angry fans.

The angry fans were the most interesting part in this equation. From what I can tell now, they weren’t angry about Charlie Sheen acting crazy. They expected that much! Think a bit and you will realize we are talking about people loving a character that much resembles the real Sheen and having a great laugh about it. What they were angry about was the show  being canceled. Continue reading

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Guest post by Neel

The mainline for hype in the PR industry for some time now has been “social media”. Whether or not this is actually achieving the sort of results which would qualify for the glowing endorsements of social sites as the “future of media” is another matter. The PR industry has in fact been pretty slow to pick up on the social sites, and actually it was market research, not PR, which really opened up the subject to debate. Like SEO, the PR industry was pretty lethargic about seeing the potential for development of social sites, and it’s only recently that social sites have been getting serious attention.

PR, issues and social media

Slothful or not, PR has now latched on to Twitter as a meaningful source of information. The fact that client interests can literally be tracked second by second, and any feedback, controversy or other issues properly monitored has been the main factor. A belated revelation, perhaps, but it’s becoming clear that PR is getting value out of the Twitterings of the world. Continue reading

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One of the not so new Twitter spamming techniques is to add a Twitter username before your worthless message. So instead of “Check out X website”, we have “@username Check out X website”. Of course, X website can be easily replaced with whatever service, product or job offering. Apply the same technique for hundreds and hundreds of users from your spammy Twitter account that follows no one and has a couple of followers and maybe some of the people you reach are actually interested and will click your link.

While this might work in some accidental cases, it will take quite the same amount of time to search for people actually interested in what you’re selling and send them the replies. If you can do that after following and getting to know them, even better. Of course, your Twitter account should be about more than @replies to those you follow, but that’s another side of the story. Continue reading

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I am happy to announce that the guide to twitter that you’ve heard about in the past couple of months on my Twitter stream or on Faebook is out! The Social Media Newbie’s Guide to Twitter for Businesses ebook, a simple guide to get businesses and individuals with a business focus started on Twitter, has just been launched!

The reason for deciding to focus on such an ebook was that while Twitter kept growing and more and more businesses created accounts and started blasting out 140 character messages, the result-free efforts were astonishing. Many people still fail to understand Twitter and their presence is more of a reflex, the adoption of a cool trend, than a thought out, carefully planned business strategy.

While I was pondering over the actual need of such a business guide, I noticed that a few articles debating Twitter-related themes became extremely popular, showing a genuine interest in quality information on getting the best out of the microblogging platform. So I powered my writing mode and completed this project, accepting the challenge of publishing my first business ebook Continue reading

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