The Twits.

I use Twitter. I like Twitter. There are some issues around the complete lack of any business plan and increasing downtime on the platform - but overall? It's A Good Thing. 

But oh dear God. Is there a bottomless jug of Kool-Aid somewhere I don't know about?

Following the bright ideas that we should use Twitter to review books and write news stories comes this gem: let's insist PR execs and companies can ONLY pitch us using Twitter. What utter twaddle.

Stowe Boyd is a highly-respected social media writer and commentator, as well as serving on the boards of several organisations in the US and Europe. I bet he gets loads of spam pitches from PR execs, and I bet it's pretty tiresome. But making PR execs jump through ridiculous hoops of sending stylised Twitpitches (and if you get it wrong three times, you're on the auto-delete filter, folks) seems counter-productive to me.

As writers, journalists, bloggers or whatever - our job is to dig out stories. Sometimes this means we have to do a bit of work. Although it's great when a smart PR exec sends us absolutely the right sort of information when we need it, sometimes the information comes from a customer, who's sent a long, rambling email about their experiences. Or it's a half-remembered anecdote repeated by a friend of a friend. Sometimes it's a case of reading a dull press announcement and spotting the angle that the PR exec has missed. Sometimes the story just is too complicated to fit into one sentence.

I'm all in favour of PR execs making the pitching process more effective, and increasing the odds of more reporters being interested in their clients' stories. But I, for one, don't expect to be spoonfed*.

(* except when on deadline and writing about multi-core processors obviously)

Comments

[Stuart Bruce - Wolfstar]

Totally agree, total twaddle. That said I have pitched via Twitter, but only to people I know well and because I thought it was right for them. There are others on Twitter who I follow/follow me that I pitched in a more traditional way.

But the other trick is journalists who've come to me because of what I've said I'm doing. That's a far more subtle, useful way of doing things.