@adamparnes

Shel Holtz wrote about how businesses are using two different types of Twitter accounts to engage their customers/clients.

He first describes the difference between a television character’s blog posting to the actors personal blog. He argues both blogs are not mutually exclusive and serve two purposes. The first blog connects with the television show’s fans and the second blog is used by the actor to stay connected with their fans. Both work well, if done right. Shel is not a fan of branded/character blogs, but does see their usefulness.

The question of which type of blog to use, branded or personal, is moving into the Twitter universe. Is it best to use a branded Twitter account or a personal Twitter account? Here’s Shel’s answer:

…don’t be too fast to dismiss logo [branded] accounts on Twitter. If they serve the purpose for which they were created, there’s no reason to fall victim to the punditry that suggests they’re some kind of misguided, clueless mistake.

He argues that branded Twitter accounts, like CNN, serve a purpose and work well. CNN is trying to deliver news as soon as possible and to as many people as possible.  He compares CNN’s Twitter use with Dell’s. Dell uses a branded account as well as personalized accounts. Both work because they serve different purposes. Dell’s branded account is used to deliver sales at its outlet store while their personalized accounts are created to help build relationships with their customers. Both branded and personalized accounts work when focused on the right audience.

Here’s some great advice from Shel:

One of Twitter’s strengths is its flexibility. It can be used for just about anything you can dream up for it. In most instances, I agree that the authentic human touch is important. But to suggest that it’s a requirement, that every branded logo account would be better if it contained a real person’s name and avatar, is a mistake. It locks organizations into an approach that may honestly not be the best way to achieve their particular goal.

I agree 100 percent. As an early Twitter user, I wrestled with using a branded account instead of a personal account. When I was considering which direction to go, I thought about my goals. When I first created @applekoolaid, the account was being used to drive traffic to my applekoolaid.com blog. Using the branded account worked well, until I decided to migrate my Internet presence to my personal blog, adamparnes.com. I decided I wanted to brand myself as well as take a more personal approach to Twitter. I renamed my Twitter account to @adamparnes and haven’t looked back. Now I have the best of both worlds: branded and a personal Twitter presence.

The best aspect of Twitter is its flexibility. You can use an account for anything you dream up. Having a purpose and an idea of the audience you’re trying to reach, will help determine what type of Twitter account will work best for you. I agree with Shel, it depends.

I’m trying to use posterous.com to post to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, YouTube, Delicious and my WordPress blog. But, I’m having trouble with the emails posterous.com is sending to my WordPress blog. The title is fine, but the body of the post loses all of its HTML formatting.

I tested posting to my WordPress blog from the WordPress iPhone app and it worked perfectly.  I don’t think WordPress can parse anything other than plain text emails into a post. Even my plain text submission to posterous.com included some basic HTML that was improperly displayed on my WordPress blog.

Here’s my question: Can WordPress handle email posting with anything other than plain text emails? I’m assuming it does, since it’s a feature of posterous.com. Or maybe my assumption is wrong. Either way I’d like to figure this out.

My alma mater, Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, recently mailed an alumni newsletter, Newhouse Network, focusing on the future of journalism. The article was a forum of professors and professionals waxing poetically about the demise of journalism and what’s next for the industry. This topic is near and dear to my heart because I’m a magazine journalism major, class of ’99, and love all forms of media.

I’m also a fan of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Last night’s episode included a segment about the demise of newspapers. “Reporter” Jason Jones interviewed New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller and Assistant Managing Editor Rick Berke. Jones asked Berke why “aged news” was better than “real news?” Jones followed with, “newspapers are aged, name one thing that happened today?” Berke could only name a few items that didn’t happen yesterday.

Here’s the dilemma, print newspapers have become one of the many sources of news. This is a huge shift in power and money. Newspapers used to be “the source” of news. Everyone used to read a newspaper to be in the know and for more in-depth analysis of world events. Today, newspapers print “old news.”

We’re in the midst of an evolution; some would even say a revolution. The power and money once held by newspapers is being dispersed throughout the Internet and 24 hour cable news channels. Two examples of the traditional media disruptors are Craigslist’s classified business and Google’s advertising.

It’s too late to focus on the problems of traditional media. I consider traditional media to be newspapers, magazines and local/national TV news. The only way for “traditional media” to survive and thrive in this new age of citizen journalism, is to look at the possibilities.

Anyone with a blog, twitter account or even Facebook account should consider themselves citizen journalists. This idea can be pretty scary for a university that offers traditional newspaper, magazine and broadcast degrees.

Currently, the fastest growing news sources are hyper local blogs. An example of a hyper local blog is the Restonian. The Restonian is a blog that only follows and reports on news and happenings in Reston. It’s become a more legitimate news source recently when the head of a local civic association complained that blog was in fact not a traditional news source. I believe acknowledging the blog, actually legitimized it.

“Traditional media” needs to look to the future. A possible future when printed newspapers are no longer delivered to subscribers’ homes, local citizen journalists will have more clout and advertising revenue, news aggregation will be as important as publishing original content, newspapers are no longer for-profit and when the skills being taught at journalism schools become interdisciplinary.

I believe converting newspapers and other news sources from for-profit to not-for-profit as a viable and a good idea. The biggest problem with newspapers today is that they are not making enough profit, and their parent companies are not able to provide the needed shareholder returns. Going not-for-profit, or even employee owned, would allow newspapers and other news sources to focus on producing and delivering great content. It’s a win for journalism, a win for journalists and a win for their audiences.

Another evolution could be the creation of a new Media degree by combining newspaper, magazine and broadcast degrees. This new program would equip students to have the multifaceted skills needed in today’s evolving media environment. I believe specializations are a career limiting endeavor. Possessing general print and broadcast skills with a solid journalism background would be much more marketable, and to me, more fun.

It’s pretty late in the game for traditional media to change and correct their course. Every day now provides an opportunity to look to the future and envision how traditional media can stay relevant and evolve. If they don’t, they’ll become what Jason Jones coins as, “A walking Colonial Williamsburg.”

Some companies understand how important it is to engage their customers. Some other companies understand how important it is to engage their customers and know how to leverage their energy.

Here’s my recent experience: last week I read on Mashable about a new Twitter application that was now available on the iPhone. The post mentioned that if you tweeted mashable and tweetstack you’d get a free code to download the application. I sent my tweet on Friday and then received their response along with the direct message with the code.

I downloaded TweetStack and quickly put it through its paces. I compared tweetstack to my current favorite twitter iPhone app, tweetie. While tweetie was the best twitter app on the iphone, tweetstack added a few features I’ve just started to use in tweetdeck. Mainly creating twitter groups and search topics.

Tweetstack provides the ability to add search and group stacks to the main view of the application. I’m finding this feature is key to increasing the value of accessing twitter on the iPhone. Tweetie requires users to click on the more button for saved searches and doesn’t offer the ability to create groups. Another feature I really like about tweetstack is the icon badges. These are the little numbers letting me know I have replies, direct messages and/or new search results. Tweetie requires a separate touch and search for replies and direct messages. Tweetie does load a little faster than tweetstack, but tweetie doesn’t search and load replies and direct messages when you open the application.

After testing the application I tweeted about my experience. I quickly heard from someone who was having trouble importing tweetdeck groups into tweetstack. I wasn’t really familiar with what he was trying to do, so I told him I’d have to give it a shot later. I also heard from tweetstack that they’re looking for any feedback or recommendations on how to make the app better.

I did have an idea. On the main page of tweetstack, the name field of the folks you are following only allow for a limited amount of characters and shorten longer names with ellipsis. Within minutes of tweeting my recommendation, I heard back from them about the idea and that they’ll look into it.

Twitter is a great medium to communicate with and engage people. Some twitter users see the space as more one-way communication. The true value of being on twitter is engaging customers and people with similar interests. The two-way communication is where the value of twitter can be found. Solely sending tweets about yourself is okay, but misses the point of the community and its potential.

Tweetstack’s engagement of their customers creates a bond and the potential for loyalty. If they continue to engage their customers, they’ll begin to create a solid user community. This user community will be a great resource for new ideas and features as well as be their best source of word-of-mouth marketing. I’m looking forward to see how tweetstack’s app and community evolve.

With three days of use under my belt, I moved Tweetstack to my iPhone’s home screen. It’s the best twitter iPhone app yet.

Over the past two or three months I’ve started to be inundated with bogus twitter follows. I’d say I’m getting 1 spam follow for every real person. I try to follow everyone back that’s following me.

It’s getting worse too. I’m following more links only to find the account was disabled or I’m losing followers.

What’s the deal twitterverse? I know twitter is growing exponentially, but at what cost to the community? The amount of retweets is also starting to clutter the twitter stream. I think I’ll need to start using the search function in tweetdeck and tweetie to get more value out of twitter.

I think the most value I’m getting from twitter is the realtime news and technology updates from some of my favorite blogs. I’m dipping my toes into twitter less and less as it’s getting too jumbled.

Is there a way to group twitter folks you follow? Twitter groups might really help me focus on the topics I’m the most interested in, like: apple, wordpress, and social media.

Don’t get me wrong, I still really enjoy tweeting and following folks I admire and find interesting. It’s just getting more difficult to stay focused. I guess that’s like everything else as it gets more complex.

I’m really considering shuttering applekoolaid.com and redirecting the url to adamparnes.com. I used the applekoolaid username and Web site for the last couple of years, but I think I really need to use my real name as my brand. Cutting and pasting articles really isn’t doing it for me. I want to start creating or at least adding to the discussion on topics I’m interested in.

I’m also trying to figure out how to integrate my twittering and blogging. I tend to spend a lot more time and attention on twittering than I have on blogging. I enjoy blogging and need to refocus my time and attention.

I started to only dip my toes into the twitter stream, instead of jumping in. I don’t think I missed much. I’m able to search twitter for people and topics. It definitely saves a lot of time and energy.

I’ll make a decision about what to do with applekoolaid.com by the end of the week. I’m leaning towards redirecting to adamparnes.com and putting a lot more time and energy into adamparnes.com.