The New Age of Twitter Journalism

Your patronizing makes feel so much better.

 

Oh, for God's sake. The wine importer/liquor store my daughter works at here in Lexington, Ma. has a Twitter person. It's her. Every business bigger than a Dairy Queen has one. It's not whether it makes money, it's that your existing customers expect it of you.

 

She should be making an extra $1,000 a month for doing that.

 

LTL is being a little archaic about this subject, but comparing media to the liquor industry doesn't make much sense. Our main currency is information. Twitter is about giving out that information. For free. That's an issue.

 

I think Twitter is great for reporters because it builds your brand. As a newspaper, Twitter is great for linking back to your site.

Other than that, I don't see how it is helping except to say "Hey, we're here, too! Don't forget us."

 

If a person's story is thin enough to be summarized by a few tweets, then it's the reporter's fault, not Twitter's. For a complex explanatory, long-form or watchdog story, it's going to be impossible to handle the layers in an 140-character tweet without clogging your feed. If your gamers are only play-by-play, you've already failed.

Twitter is valuable to break news. If you've got an exclusive, you can wait to post a link to your blog. If someone else may get it, then tweet out and remind readers to check your website for more info throughout the day. If you've produced enough good stuff, or have a good enough story, you'll draw interest.

You can also do a better job advertising your work, which leads to more clicks. Kleinman said they weren't happy with the number of clicks per tweet, but they still get some clicks from each tweet.

I think customer service departments need to be engaging people on Twitter. A lot of people complain about service on Twitter. "Stupid Podunk News didn't come today." A simple Twitter search will show you people who are having trouble. Or they can tweet at you, and you can handle their problem simply.

 

What's the ROI?

 

If they follow you, they see your tweets when you link to content on your site. That increases your traffic, which -- in theory -- makes it easier for you to draw in online advertisers. You have to extend your reach online, and Twitter is an easy way to do that.

Or just keep ignoring it.

 

ROI is quantifiable.

 

The use of Twitter in customer relations and services is now SOP for most big consumer product companies.

 

The link that started this thread states in plain letters that the tweeting is not increasing web traffic.

 

And using your daughter's wine/liquor store example, I'm sure it does a very good job of alerting interested, engaged customers that it's time to go to the store and find that rare bottle or good deal. For companies actually selling a product, it's great.

Now where does that get us related to newspapering?