This pretty much sums up why brands like Ad Age are missing an opportunity on Twitter. They ignore any conversation, they NEVER respond to comments or inquiries. And they break the most common rules of etiquette for the community. This isn’t surprising considering they represent both the print media (who clearly doesn’t understand how to exist online) and advertising’s Old Guard (who desperately want to remain relevant but usually can’t wrap their head around it).
A typical post is represented by an example like this one: Brink’s Set to Unveil $120 Million Rebranding Effort: NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — At a time when awareness of its br.. http://tinyurl.com/nt623f
They ignore the 140 character limit completely, clearly copying and pasting from an article. Doing this demonstrates that they don’t care about the way information is exchanged on a specific channel (in this case Twitter). Even worse, it has that old media stench, the “WE will tell YOU what is important and you will read every last word”. Using the full character count with a wasted segment of an introductory line also keeps the piece from being re-tweeted. (see another example of AdAge Social Media Blindness)
In this forum, it would be be best to rewrite the headline or summary of the piece to fit the forum. It would also help with engagement if they would add some posts asking for reader opinion or feedback, or by occasionally responding to a tweet in their direction.
Social site users aren’t there to talk about your brand, even though they may occasionally indulge you. They are there to share experiences. To participate in a conversation that they might not have offline. That’s why you should be there too.
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