@AdAge

@Ogilvy

@Brandweek

@McKinney

@AP

@Fleishman

@nytimes

@Google

@mashable

@OgilvyWW

@PRNewswire

@UNCJSchool

This visualization shows them all (click to enlarge):

*Includes only accounts followed for the first time this week, not all accounts followed.

Next time we’ll look at the personal sites they follow.

I also asked them to follow 5 accounts just for the fun of it, and here are the favorites from that exercise:

36.3% just joined Twitter as a requirement for the course.

The other 63.7% have been using Twitter for almost a year (mean = 325 days, SD = 152.5), have almost 60 followers (mean = 59.8, SD = 82.6), follow just over 100 (mean = 103.6, SD = 161.7), and have tweeted almost 200 times (mean = 196.4, SD = 447.5).

Here’s a visualization of their Twitter bio information:

(As a part of her social media/marketing internship this semester, UNC advertising student Emily Widle has written a series of guest posts for the Social Brand Project. In her fourth post she shares her thoughts about personalizing a company’s Twitter account. — joe.bob)

Apparently, “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” can be loosely translated to “all work tweets and no personal tweets make any company’s social media presence a dull one.”  It’s definitely not as catchy of a saying, but it gets the point across.

One of my main takeaways from Twitterville was the importance of personalizing a company’s Twitter account.  Shel Israel argued that in general, it is better to:

1. Not have just one company account.

2. Have many individual employees tweeting from separate, personal accounts that are affiliated with the company name.

3. Avoid using a logo as a profile picture.  (Use a picture of the actual person who is tweeting).

4. Encourage employees to occasionally tweet outside the box of company/industry news.

Of course, there are exceptions.  Like @DellOutlet, which strictly tweets out discount codes and product offers.  They’ve sold $2 million from it.

However, according to Israel, most companies who take a more personal approach on Twitter are able to more effectively engage followers.  The whole point of social media is to stay more connected, so why close off that opportunity by hiding behind the wall of a company logo?

This particular aspect of Twitterville has resonated with me since I finished reading the book a month ago.  I am constantly curious about what different company’s strategies are for handling multiple social media accounts.  After all, giving employees free reign to tweet under a company-affiliated username sounds nice, but it can certainly pose some problems.  It’s a risky move to give up that much control over brand reputation.  Some third-party Twitter applications are recognizing that issue and creating services that save tweets for approval by a specified administer before publication.

Right now, I tweet for @PegasusLighting.  The profile picture is our company logo, but our Vice President’s name is listed as the person behind the account.  Chris and I both have access to the account, but I generally tweet more often than he does.  Perhaps when I start full-time for the company I’ll start a separate Twitter account.  Shel Israel’s arguments made sense to me – people like interacting with other people, and it’s important to be open with your followers.

(As a part of her social media/marketing internship this semester, UNC advertising student Emily Widle has written a series of guest posts for the Social Brand Project. In her third post she shares her thoughts about press releases. — joe.bob)

I’m in the advertising sequence of the J-school, and I’ve never been a huge fan of press releases.  I know they’re typically considered necessary, but in most cases, they come across as dull company news unsuccessfully attempting to come across as revolutionary.  In fact, that was probably part of the reason I chose the advertising sequence (over public relations).  Advertising tends to be at least somewhat entertaining and engaging.  I think it’s pretty difficult in general to write an article about how great you are and get substantial attention from it.

That being said, I’ve been working really hard to make the press releases I write for my internship as interesting as possible.  A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself if you would want to read the press release if you weren’t working for the company.  That may not always be an attainable goal, but it’s something to shoot for.

One great resource I found was PRWeb.com: http://www.prweb.com/pr/press-release-tip/index.html.  They have a ton of articles with tips and ideas for improving your writing skills for press releases.  I find it helpful to skim through an article or two for inspiration and get myself in the mindset before starting to write.

Here’s the first press release I wrote for Pegasus Lighting: http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20100223005300&newsLang=en

When I started doing a little research about press release tips, I came across a number of articles discussing how likely it is that traditional press releases will become obsolete in the near future as companies continue to embrace social media to disseminate news to shareholders.  I think we would all agree that incidents like the recent Toyota catastrophe would have been better handled with an immediate, direct response – one that social media truly facilitates.  It will be interesting to see what the future holds for press releases with the escalating growth in communication through social media in the business world.

(As a part of her social media/marketing internship this semester, UNC advertising student Emily Widle has written a series of guest posts for the Social Brand Project. In her second post she discusses the problems with automatic direct messages. — joe.bob)

I can’t remember whether I picked it up from reading Twitterville or attending a webinar, but I recently read a suggestion about creating automatic direct messages (ADMs) for your business.  The idea was that ADMs could allow you to effortlessly thank new followers and even include a link to your blog or website to increase traffic.  Right away, I made a note to ask my boss if this was something @PegasusLighting currently does.  He responded that it wasn’t, and I could go ahead and set it up.  So naturally, I went to Google and typed in “automatic direct message twitter,” thinking I would find a quick tutorial to save me time.

However, tutorials weren’t the first results that popped up.  The first few headlines I scanned: “Do You Hate Automatic Direct Messages?”; “Automatic Direct Messages are Pointless”; “Automatic Twitter Direct Message: Is it a Good Thing Anymore?”; and finally, “Big Twitter Mistakes #2: The Automatic Direct Message.”  There were a couple of tutorials in the mix of search results, but they were all peppered with comments from readers calling ADMs anything from “artificial” to “gross.”  Clearly, there was something I had missed.

In my relatively short time on Twitter, ADMs have never bothered me.  Once I began reading a few of the critical articles, though, I could see the argument.  For the avid Twitter user, who might have hundreds of followers, ADMs are equivalent to spam.  At least a few are delivered per day to clutter the Twitter “inbox”, they are impersonal, and they have little to no value.  Perhaps most importantly, they have nothing to do with creating a relationship: They are a one-sided, self-serving, and generic promotion of the particular sender.  And isn’t the number one rule of marketing to create a relationship?

Including a link to a company blog in an ADM is likely useless.  First of all, followers probably already checked it out before they decided to follow.  Secondly, the point of a Twitter account is to engage followers enough to make them want to check out your blog or site on their own.  Force-feeding it to them defeats the purpose, and may even lead them to unfollow you.

As you can probably guess, I decided not to set up ADMs for @PegasusLighting.  The last thing I wanted was for our followers to think we were spamming them with useless information.  Thankfully, I realized how unpopular they were in the process of researching for a tutorial.  In the future, I’ll be sure to do a little more research before making a change like that.

(As a part of her social media/marketing internship this semester, UNC advertising student Emily Widle has written a series of guest posts for the Social Brand Project. In her first post, written after one month on the job, she discusses her introduction to Twitter. — joe.bob)

When I accepted a social media/marketing internship with Pegasus Associates Lighting in January, I didn’t give Twitter a second thought. Of course, I knew one of my responsibilities would be actively monitoring the company’s account, but I didn’t foresee any potential challenges in that. Last September, I had opened a personal Twitter account, tweeted a couple of times about who knows what, followed a few friends and celebrities, and decided it wasn’t for me. At the time, Twitter just seemed like yet another social networking site I didn’t need to waste my time on.

I’ve only been tweeting under my company’s account for a month. Apparently, that’s all it takes to convert someone into a Twitter lover. The more time I spend on it, the more I see its value from both a personal and business standpoint. However, I think there’s a bit of a learning curve with Twitter that surprised me – perhaps that’s why I missed the point the first time.

First of all, @PegasusLighting is following 630 people and has 536 followers. Overwhelming much? My first day, I simply logged into the account and read the stream for what felt like ages, struggling to figure out something relevant to add to the conversation. My first week, I think I tweeted once: a link to a Department of Energy article about stimulus funds for research & development in the LED market.

Thankfully, it got a lot easier. I subscribed to Google Alerts with a few lighting keywords to find interesting articles to share and began interacting with followers. The blog posts I began to write were tweeted and even retweeted. (Believe me, a retweet for a Twitter newbie is unbelievably exciting). I found more people to follow through places like Twellow and through the #followfriday suggestions of lighting designers, contractors, remodelers, energy-efficiency enthusiasts, and others. Basically, I became more comfortable with Twitter and the lighting industry.

I am sure that the majority of Advertising and PR majors will be required to use Twitter at some point in their careers. Obviously, social media is transforming the way people communicate with each other. With millions of existing and potential customers/clients using the social networks, it’s no longer possible for companies to ignore the influence social media has on brand reputation. I wish I had taken a class in the past introducing me to using Twitter from a business standpoint. I’ve had classes where we talk about it, but never actually engaged with it. I know Joe Bob is encouraging his students to use Twitter, mostly because I see the #JOMC279 tags on my feed, which is awesome. I am also reading Twitterville right now, which is an excellent book that is increasingly convincing me that there is a place on Twitter for every single type of company.

Of course, no one needs a class to teach themselves how to effectively leverage Twitter in an internship or job. It really just takes time to immerse yourself in the Twitter community. You’ll fall in love with it, too.