BuzzStream

As every entrepreneur knows, speed is your friend.  There are few online services better at that than Twitter (when it’s up anyway).  Since it’s such an incredible platform for finding and disseminating news, I highly recommend you take a look at using Twitter as a PR vehicle.  I’ve compiled a few rules to consider before you start.   

1. If you have a personal Twitter account, start a new one for professional contacts.  This is marketing 101, but it’s a question of audience.  Don’t confuse your professional contacts who are following Mike-the-CEO with your friends and family who are following Mike-The-Guy-Who-Won-Last-Weekends-Drinking-Contest. That doesn’t mean your professional tweets have to be stiff and corporate, but there’s a line (think Linkedin versus Facebook).
2. Your tweets should be from you personally, so choose a Twitter id that reflects your name, not your company.  Think about it: would you rather follow “AppleCorporation” or “SteveTheAppleGuy.” People want their news from the CEO.
3. Get as many friends on Twitter as you can… put your Twitter id in your email signature, on your blog, your Linkedin profile.  Let Twitter troll your email accounts to find your existing friends who are on Twitter.  Follow them, and hopefully they’ll follow you.
4. Follow everyone who you like, respect, and matters.  As Scoble points, out, “the more people [you] follow, the smarter [you] get.” 
5. Follow journalists who cover your space (this may work better (or not) in tech).  You can find out what’s top of mind for them and add value when appropriate, or maybe react quickly with a relevant pitch, or both.
6. If you blog, announce your blog posts on Twitter.
7. Announce minor new features, upgrades, service downtime, hardware upgrades, and other helpful news about your company on Twitter.  Twitter is great for announcing the “small wins” that aren’t worthy of press releases, but are interesting and cool.
8. Twitter about things that matter to your company: new laws that suck, cool blog posts that support your vision of the future, blog posts that get it wrong.  Take a stand and give your tweets a point of view.
9. Remember, your tweets are more or less public, and cannot be undone, so exercise some basic caution about what you want “on the record.”  If you wouldn’t want it printed in tomorrow’s WSJ…
10. Billy Goat Tavern is a bar in Chicago known as a hang out for the city’s top journalists.  A barfly there could easily stay on top of the news by sitting around all day and chatting up the regulars.  But Twitter may not be that watering hole for your industry.  If Twitter isn’t a place your industry tends to hang out, decide if that’s just because you’re ahead of the curve or because your industry may never adopt Twitter.  Effective entrepreneurship is all about the right action at the right time.

PS: I know I skipped right past any explanation of Twitter, so if you’re wondering, “What is Twitter?” here’s the best video I’ve found to answer that question.   Keep in mind it’s from the perspective of the general Twitter user, so hopefully this post helps you adapt the key ideas for use in a business/public relations context.