Posts Tagged ‘communication’

Balancing open dialogue with the prevention of obnoxious, mean comments

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

By Susan Matthews, APR, principal

I’ve said on many an occasion: “If I want to get really down on humanity, all I need to do is read some reader comments in response to an online article.” Too often these jibes are beyond nasty; they’re downright cruel.

In conversations with reporters from the Indianapolis Star, the Wall StreetFeedback Journal and elsewhere, I hear them lament that they hesitate to interview some people for fear that the innocent interviewee will suffer taunts and insults through online reader feedback. How sad and ironic that in the spirit of increased dialogue, we’re limiting the stories, people and ideas that are offered to us through the news media.

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Want to twiggle? We can show you how.

Friday, August 7th, 2009

By Susan Matthews, APR, principal

All you tweeters out there probably know that your Twitter homepage has sponsored definitions that link to Twitter-related services. Sometimes the names of these sponsors are rather clever, building a new, focused lexicon – or should we say twexicon?

twexicon

In the spirit of the ever-growing World of Tweetisms, I’d like to suggest a few of my own:

  • A twypo is an old-fashioned misspelling, not to be confused with a tword, which is missing vowels (as in “… bd mbrs shld arrive before 5 pm”).
  • A twiggle is a tweet that makes you laugh, so of course a twad makes you sad – or is that mad?
  • What’s a twudget? It’s the limit of 140 characters, as in “it’s extra hard to keep to your twudget in a retweet.”
  • A twoops is when you hit “post” before you want to. I do that every now and then when I’m shortening a link via bit.ly. And I hate it.
  • Tweet meat, my personal favorite, is something meaningful and substantial to say via Twitter. Some people would say tweet meat is an oxymoron, and that there’s nothing to be gained by Twitter.

But I beg to differ. We now have another tool in our communications tool box. And while there’s a lot of babble and boring information filling the Twitter waves, this new social media tool gives us a chance to make new connections, access focused information, and instantly communicate with those who choose to follow us.

Plus, we are in total control of whom we follow and who we allow to follow us. So if you don’t want to engage, or if you simply don’t care – then it’s probably time to twign-off. For the rest of you, I’ll see you on Twitter.

Have your own favorite Twitter words? Share them here or @borshoff.

- Follow @Susan_Matthews if you’re interested in just a few tweets a day, generally relating to branding and communications.