Chris Brogan's Twitter Advice

Chris Brogan is President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency, and home of the Inbound Marketing Summit conferences and Inbound Marketing Bootcamp educational events. He is a ten year veteran of using social media and both web and mobile technologies. This helps build digital relationships for businesses, organizations and individuals.

In his blog "50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business" he discusses steps to take, ideas about what to tweet, how to address who to respond to and how, and positives and negatives about Twitter.

The part that I focused on is the section about what to tweet because this is where most my trouble comes from. Simply by changing the question from "What are you Doing?" to "What has your attention?" already makes it much easier to understand. Also, asking other people what they think and asking them questions to help yourself out is a huge opportunity that we might not otherwise have. The ability to just throw out questions that anybody can answer will be such a help. This is also where I think the social media networking site LinkedIn will come in handy.

From a company standpoint, it makes sense to have more than one person at the company Twittering to avoid dull or lacking times. Most importantly, "Don't toot your own horn too much." Nobody likes someone that only talks about themselves in the real world, why would anybody like it in the virtual world? They wouldn't.

After reading the "7 Reasons Social Media is A No-Brainer for Passionate B2C Brands" I found that it is quite accurate and provided insight to the world of advertising with a PR twist.
Adam Singer, the author, says that social media marketing spending is predicted to grow at an annual rate of 34%. Companies should be surging to the social media trends but not all are. Singer lists the seven reasons:
1. Take your communications directly to consumer- Traditional media is shrinking and digital media continues to grow. Companies taking part in the digital media age is making it easy for their consumers to find them just by searching Google.
2. Avoid a negative groundswell- Be active in the social media. Negative experiences spread quickly by word of mouth.
3. Own your presence in popular platforms- Join in on Facebook and Twitter because your consumers are there and have already talked about your company and your name in such social media sites.
4. Truly understand your demographic- Social media is the ultimate focus group, this is where your consumers are.
5. Social media/SEO intersection- While there are similarities, the differences can intertwine and be effective so don't throw one or the other out.
6. Real-time market research- Social media is changing every second with the latest news and fads so you can find out what your consumers wants and needs are consistantly.
7. It's nearly 2010, consumers expect it- The world is moving so jump on so you don't get lost and forgotten.


I find these to be perfect examples as to why as PR practitioners we should have some input in social media. Especially when it comes to numbers 1, 6 and 7.