PR TweetJots - PR Blog Jots Twitter Edition

How Not to Tweet
Clipping the Social Web
Many of my Twitter friends have been complaining lately that the person responsible for the official “Today Show” Twitter account is driving them nuts, following them repeatedly in an apparent effort to get some attention. Julia Roy explores how the “Today Show” Tweeter is endangering their hopes of gaining a loyal audience by spamming the community with multiple follows and rapid-fire updates. She lists some of her friends’ annoyed tweets, and offers advice on how to strategically build a Twitter audience without ticking anyone off. “Even when you are as big as the Today Show, start out with small targeted friendships and test the water. Learn and continue to grow your network organically and through gradually following others over time. You will have a much more engaged and loyal audience this way.”

Corporate Tweet?
PR Squared
In a post that generated a lot of interesting discussion late last week, Todd Defren wonders if a huge corporation, perhaps a pharmaceutical company, could benefit from attempting to communicate to a targeted audience through Twitter. Todd uses a hypothetical company with a drug for clinical depression as an example, noting that a few quick searches could locate a community that might be interested in tweets about that particular drug. Setting aside the somewhat controversial nature of this particular example, Todd hits on something interesting: that the human interaction required for a platform like Twitter may serve to alter some people’s perceptions about corporate giants. “The use of a Social Media tool like Twitter – used with subtlety, grace and in adherence to the idea of contributing to the community – could make a Big Pharma company like Pfizer look downright humane.  Maybe even human.  Whodathunkit??”

Twitter Tracks
/Message
Linking to the Twitter blog announcement that Twitter has been upgraded to include a tracking element allowing users to track any Tweets about a given keyword, Stowe Boyd wonders if the new upgrades will really be a good addition to the service. He mentions that the tracking element doesn’t seem to be very refined, and that it should be more opt-in, as with the #tags some Tweeters use to allow others to track their messages on a given topic. “#Hashtags are declarative and imply a community. If I tag things with '#travels' I would expect there to be a place where I can see the aggregated stream of all people's posts with '#travels' in it. But I don't necessarily want to see every post with the word 'travels' in it, do I?”