8 Twitter essentials for PR

Happily, the answer need not be prohibitively complex. Although the specifics will depend on your specialty—crisis, public affairs, business to business, etc.—a variety of best practices cover our profession as a whole.

Here are eight that every PR pro should follow:

1. Establish your own PR strategy.

Decide what percentage of your tweets will pertain to news about yourself and your firm, and what percentage will pertain to news about your industry. You don’t want to be known as the person who’s always talking about himself or herself.

Follow the model set by @jowyang, who “rarely talks about waking up, eating lunch, or starting my car. Instead, I want to add value.”

2. Practice full disclosure.

If a tweet concerns a client, disclose your relationship. For example, @nmsosphere requires its staff to “always include the hashtag #client for any tweets or retweets involving marketing on behalf of our clients.”

3. Always be professional.