Today the PCC ruled that Twitter should be considered public and so material found on the micro-blogging site can be published freely and used elsewhere.
This happened after a complaint by Department of Transport official Sarah Baskerville. She was upset by newspapers using her tweets to suggest she wasn’t doing her job properly and was wasting tax-payers money. She said it was an invasion of privacy.
Ms Baskerville argued that this information was private and only meant for her 700 followers. Hmm. Private to 700 pairs of eyes reading her updates? Not to mention retweets out to wider networks. Doesn’t sound very private to me.
This is another case where those using Twitter forget the purpose of the social media tool and/or aren’t using it properly.
A social media account should be used as a brand management tool. Be that your own personal brand or of a larger organisation. For a professional account, tweets should always be relevant to the company or general industry you operate in. For personal feeds they should show you in your best light. Both types are a chance for the public to see some personality behind the smoke-screen of a website or CV.
Think about what impression you want to have on potential online followers/friends/connections. What other interests you wish to promote and the persona you wish to create and think about these in every tweet.
Cos potentially the whole world can see what you’re saying, which is kinda the point in social media Ms Baskerville. Duh.
For more information on how to use Twitter properly, check out The Twitter Guidebook from Mashable.
Section headings are:
- Twitter 101 – The Basics
- Building Your Twitter Community
- Twitter for Business
- Top Twitter Follows
- Sharing on Twitter
- Managing Your Twitter Stream
By Lucy Hewitt
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James Glynn
kirstymalcolm
linzikinghorn
lucybean
vanessaholland101
generated by users 