Ask not for whom Twitter tweets; it tweets for thee
It came in an email at the close of yesterday afternoon: the dreadful news we’d been waiting for. No, not Jade Goody’s passing, but a chilly wind of change blowing through the hallowed halls of traditional public relations. And this is what the email said:
The Guardian’s Technology Editor, Charles Arthur, has indicated that he prefers to receive pitches from PR professionals via Twitter.
That’s right, no more ringing up Charles and pitching a story over the phone. No more lengthy emails. From now on we’re limited to communicating with him in just 140 characters using our mobiles or twitter.com.
For anyone not au fait with Twitter, it’s essentially a cross between micro-blogging and Facebook. But what’s marking it out as an issue for comms professionals is the growing number of journalists asking to receive pitches from PRs via it. Granted, most of these journalists are (a) American and (b) technology writers, but the trend is spreading. And it’s important to note that UK trade journalists and early adopters of new technology have a key demographic in common: they’re both in their 20s and 30s.
So what does this mean for PR practitioners? Should we abandon our press releases and our lengthy phone conversations in favour of condensing everything to a 140-character ‘tweet’ sent online? Absolutely not. You try pitching a reasonably complex business story in just 20 words.
Do journalists genuinely think Twitter is a better medium for a PR pitch or does it simply offer them a way of filtering out extraneous PR noise? Or is it more of a gesture – a way for a technology specialist like Charles Arthur, who is a highly intelligent and literate writer, to demonstrate that he ‘walks the talk’, technologically speaking.
Right now the jury is still out. B2B trade media are aware of the new technology and are beginning to experiment with it. So PRs, too, need to get to grips with Twitter and make a realistic assessment of its potential as a communication channel. And you can’t understand Twitter unless you use it, which is why we’re experimenting with it at FWD.
Today, for example, a picture appeared in many national tabloids of actress Demi Moore’s posterior as photographed by her husband Ashton Kutchner and uploaded to Twitter. At least that’s what the story said. Or are we actually looking at an example of a clever PR using Twitter to raise Ms Moore’s flagging profile with an allegedly candid shot?
Find me on Twitter and let me know what you think.
Genuine Twitter picture or just clever PR? Only Ashton and Demi know.
Written by Adrian Beeby
Tags: Charles Arthur, PR pitch, social media, tweet, Twitter
