Last weekend I wrote on my personal, semi-anonymous blog that I wouldn’t post on Twitter. Now, I’m almost convinced to reconsider. Thanks to a short article in a British Columbia regional newspaper, The Northern View. The author, Bruce Wishart, credited San Francisco Chronicle staff writer, Spud Hilton, with inspiring him to advise local business owners to use Twitter for promoting tourism. Two keys quoted in Wishart’s article, mainly attributed to Hilton, make especially great sense to me as an editor:
1. Don’t Use Twitter for Social Purposes.
2. Think of the Tweets as News Headlines.
These particular concepts give me all kinds of cause for interest. As I said in my other blog, I just don’t have the time to keep up with another social venue. But I could make time to promote my career interests, using sharp, succinct “headlines” that enlighten, entertain or inform. Free advertising is a rare commodity. Aren’t those of us in business always hoping for complimentary promotion where we can get it?
And how about the headline concept? What do writing coaches teach concerning the opening scene in a story or initial paragraph in an article? Grab the reader’s attention. That’s what news journalists try to do, too: 1. Catchy headline; 2. Who, what, where, when & how in the first paragraph. If there can be only 140 characters in a tweet, why waste them in babble? Why not let Twitter be your public relations, “sound-bite” manager?
Will I give in to Twitter? I don’t know yet. If I get a handle on what I think would do me the most good, I just might. Maybe I need one more convincing perspective to unseat me from the position of “too busy.”
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