Two recent marketing views of how Twitter is doing with PR. First up over in PR Week Aarti Shah writes about twittergate and the PR response (subscription required). Her key point (supported by ahem neutral parties Robert Scoble and Steve Rubel) is that twitter needs a crisis communications plan plus more seasoned PR people either internally or at an agency. She and I talked about this story, my POV (not reflected) is that Twitter is doing a good job of talking directly to its audiences in an authentic way, and that while they are doing things differently, it does not mean they are doing anything wrong – look at their media coverage, for example.
The today, AdAge reports that Twitter Generated $48 Million of Media Coverage in a Month. Setting aside their methodology to determine this (deeply flawed), it sure looks like whatever they are doing is driving media coverage. What’s missing of course here is what the media coverage says – sort of critical, IMHO.
Where Twitter really needs to be careful is making sure that their PR coverage does not get too far ahead of reality. That, more than anything else, is the danger they face – unmoored hype is a killer.