A word on Twitter drama surrounding those who teach social media
I know I haven’t been the most kind to those of the “social media guru” persuasion, but I really think you guys are missing the point. Yes, I resent the fact that my creative outlet (Twitter) is being hijacked by people who want to assign a purpose to it. But I also see its potential from a public relations perspective. Just look at @JetBlue or even @HensenCompany. And, really, the beauty of Twitter is that no one is forcing you to follow anyone else.
It may be shocking, but the people who are responsible for making decisions about where a corporation’s marketing dollars go aren’t aware that Twitter even exists – let alone that it can be a valuable and relatively inexpensive means of reaching people who actually care about what their company is doing. These workshops are intended to toss out the possibility of using digital media to supplement a company’s marketing mix. And not just by signing up for Twitter, either. There’s a cornucopia of online opportunities – some better suited to address a company’s marketing objective than others.
This is not at all meant to interject myself into a conflict, however real or imagined it may be. I still remain a skeptic of social media experts (most of them are snake oil salesmen). It’s just, from a communicator’s perspective, social media has such great potential and to dismiss those who attempt to show professionals that things like Twitter are more than just platforms for telling everyone what you ate for lunch is most unfortunate and myopic. So, give @toddblog a break. He’s a good guy and knows a lot more about social media than just setting up Twitter accounts.
Now, hug it out. This Twitter drama is really harshing my mellow.
