Twitter is not to be ignored

After the two guest speakers we've had I can see that marketers see Twitter as a vital part of what they do (and what everyone should do). I actually have tried to be better about logging in and tweeting more often since we had Greg as a speaker. I even saw an article in this week's Rochester Insider (p 21) on the 3 people profiles are using Twitter to help promote themselves. I was looking for a link to share with you, but I couldn't seem to find it on their site. I will bring in the print version on Thursday if anyone is interested, or you can pick one up practically anywhere.

Matt brought up a good point in his post To Tweet, or not to Tweet about building a following for a small brand or company on Twitter. I would like to throw one other thing out there about this topic -- what if your small company is strictly local? What would be the best way to start building a following on Twitter?

To Tweet, or not to Tweet?

I share Mary's enthusiasm for Fast Company. An excellent read, and worth the $10 for a yearly subscription if you want something tangible to hold onto.

The article I found interesting made it way to me via Twitter, and is about Twitter, one of Greg's passions.

The underlying story, as I read it between the lines, is Twitter is a mass instant messenger(period) .

Back when AIM first started off in the late 1990's, you could IM a friend or a few, and talk about things. And when you closed that conversation, the "messages" were in essence gone. Not that you couldn't save the message, and I don't think anyone is naive enough to know the police/government can't find those messages somewhere, but the conversation is basically gone. Twitter only tracks the conversations and key words for about a week. Meaning if the people following you aren't waiting for your Tweets, they may just miss them. This is not the basic structure of Facebook and Myspace. Those messages tend to reside on your wall for a bit longer, unless say it is your birthday and you get baraged with Congratulations. And I suppose if you have thousands of friends leaving messages at the same time, like the example of Michael Jackson's death, a single message could get lost in the shuffle.

http://tinyurl.com/mvq848 Has Twitter Handicapped Our Ability to Mourn

But from my experience this past week, and seeing the response from friends, family, and even some acquaintenances I barely know. Facebook lends itself for a more meeningful emotional connection than Twitter. So if you are trying to utilize Twitter for PR purposes and you don't have connections like Brian Williams or Ann Curry, or a big title at a major US company like Jeff Hayzlett, how can you build traction with a small brand or company on Twitter? I am not sure you can.

By the way, Jeff and Kodak are tweeting the opportunity to name the new Kodak pocket video camera with all kinds of prizes to be won. I am sure Jeff isn't the only one tweeting this and I have seen at least 40 tweets today mentioning the topic. So how many tweets does it take to get past just scratching the surface of recognition.

PR and Twitter

Greg Camp was a great speaker to have in our class this past Thursday. He's very energetic about what he does, and about PR in general. There are a few things I took away from that night, but mostly it was how Twitter is becoming a powerful form of direct communication for marketing professionals. I'm still very much a Twitter novice, and I'm still trying to fully understand its usefulness (sorry Paula). When he said he hasn't sent out a press release in over 8 months, that really struck a cord. That's when it hit me that, WOW, Twitter is really becoming mainstream.

I have a question for the class. Outside of Toshiba, does anyone else's company use Twitter on a daily basis?