Twitter for journalists - a starting point

I've just been answering some questions from a journalist about how to use Twitter. It prompted me to jot down a few basics that could help to any reporter, feature writer or broadcaster who is new to Twitter.

1. Don't worry if you don't understand Twitter, just create your Twitter account and follow the steps below
   
2. Make sure your Twitter biography includes your media outlet name and keywords relating to the subjects you cover
3. One of your first Tweets should be 'I'm a journalist for [name if outlet] magazine/newspaper/website and I'm looking for info from PR people on [keywords relating to your specialist areas or 'patch']
4. Consider following PR people in your sector. A good place to find out PR people on Twitter is the ukmediatweeple wiki

Then sit back and wait for relevant public relations professionals to start following you (smart PRs should be tracking Twitter using alert services like TweetBeep and Twilert). You can then Tweet things like "who does the PR for XYZ" of "I need quotes about the XYZ story" and get responses from PRs.

If you have a more sophisticated request or one you don't want to plaster on a very public website like Twitter, then you can use my Response Source journalist enquiries service, which many thousands of PRs follow.

Oh, and you could also follow me!

Comments

[Daryl Willcox]

Sally Whittle has made a good point (http://gettingink.typepad.com/getting_ink/2009/02/if-you-just-cant-get-enough-.html?cid=148070907) - why would journalists want to invite PRs to send them even more stuff when they're already suffering from information overload?

What's nice about Twitter is it is easy to ingore stuff. You can just dip in an out as you like. Yet it is still a good way to letting people know what you're working on.

Whether or not you would want to follow my tips would depend on your attitude to PR and how established you are in a particular sector. Well-established journalists who get a lot of relevant pitches by PRs will probably not want to follow my advice.

[Amy Johnston]

I think this is an interesting post. From my own experience, it's clear that all journalists are different.

Each prefer to be contacted in a different way. Some by phone, some by email; some hate follow up calls, others like them to create a call to action for a single email amongst hundreds of others!

I think the key is pitching a strong, relevant story to the right journalist. This is the first step. Once you have a contact, find out how they prefer to be contacted - and stick to it!