Sandy Wilson, Public Relations, Media Relations, Communications in Jacksonville, Florida

For me, Twitter is a communications platform offering endless opportunities to send a message to a target audience AND throw this message up against the wall to see what sticks.

A quick way to measure Twit-cess: Your target audience will respond to a successful Tweet via Direct Message (or text or email or even a phone call) or by Re-Tweeting your message.  Your Wall Splat audience will respond by becoming a Follower after your Tweet.  Simple, right? 

So, why not add Twitter in your corporate marketing mix?  Not all companies should spend time and money on Twitter, but they must use their own critical thinking skills to determine if they should spend a portion of their marketing/advertising budget on any available Social Media platforms.  Public relations consultants  can help companies make informed decisions by providing information about Social Media options and helping companies think through possible Social Media strategies, including whether or not Twitter should be part of their communications/marketing mix.

Despite what you've heard and will continue to hear, there are no Social Media rules.  Your strategy works if it works for YOU.  Common sense, critical thinking, goals and benchmarking are key to developing and implementing a successful Social Media plan, whether you plan to leverage Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or other emerging platforms.  While it's smart to pay  attention to the plethora of commentary, articles, blogs, etc. to help you make informed decisions, I personally don't believe in paying for white papers or for opinions.  It makes more sense to me to conduct your own research and determine your own strategy.  A good PR consultant will help you think through the process, not hand you a set of rules that may or may not have worked for another company. 

I've gathered a list of quotes that reference multiple perspectives on the development of the World Wide Web and its relationship to  communication and economy.  It appears in reading these quotes that determining how best to leverage and monetize emerging media platforms  among communications and public relations professionals is an ongoing disconnect - I mean, discussion.

It seems that the most successful communicators are the ones who throw the traditional "rules" out the Window instead of trying to force emerging platforms to fit into outdated "rules."  Successful communicators and public relations  professionals will shift the way they think about emerging communications platforms and begin to think around and through these targeted and Wall Splat opportunities for the benefit of their clients.     

History of the World Wide Web in 17 Quotes:

If I had taken a proprietary control of the Web, then it would never have taken off. People only committed their time to it because they knew it was open, shared: that they could help decide what would happen to it next... and I wouldn't be raking off 10% - Tim Berners-Lee (World Wide Web Founder)

First, we thought the PC was a calculator.  Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII - and we thought it was a typewriter.  Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television.  With the World Wide Web, we've realized it's a brochure.  - Douglas Adams (Author)

The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow. - Bill Gates (Microsoft Chairman)

The Internet is just a world passing around notes in a classroom. - Jon Stewart (Political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic)

The Internet is an important cultural phenomenon, but that doesn't excuse its failure to comply with basic economic laws.  The problem is that it was devised by a bunch of hippie anarchists. - Thomas Nolle (Founder and president of CIMI Corporation)

The Internet is based on a layered, end-to-end model that allows people at each level of the network to innovate free of any central control.  By placing intelligence at the edges rather than control in the middle of the network, the Internet has created a platform for innovation.  - Vinton Cerf (Computer Scientist often called the father of the internet, Google Internet Evangelist)

The Internet isn't free.  It just has an economy that makes no sense to capitalism. - Brad Shapcott(Internet Product Architect and Software Engineer)

Five years ago, we thought of the Web as a new medium, not a new economy. - Clement Mok(Digital Pioneer)

Sooner or later the Internet will become profitable.  It's an old story played before by canals, railroads and automobiles. - Paul A. Samuelson (Economist)

If you look at our corporate culture, we've always had a customer obsession, and we've always been pioneering.- Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com)

I think Amazon is the preeminent pioneer in building a new way of doing commerce: personalized, database-driven commerce, where the big value is not in the purchase fulfillment, but in knowing as much about a customer base of ten or twenty million people as a corner store used to know about a customer base of a few hundred. In today's mass-merchandising world, that's largely gone; Amazon is trying to use computer technology to re-establish it.- Andrew Grove (Intel Corp.)

When I started eBay, it was a hobby, an experiment to see if people could use the Internet to be empowered through access to an efficient market. I actually wasn't thinking about it in terms of a social impact. It was really about helping people connect around a sphere of interest so they could do business.- Pierre Omidyar (E-bay Founder)

The remarkable social impact and economic success of the Internet is in many ways directly attributable to the architectural characteristics that were part of its design. The Internet was designed with no gatekeepers over new content or services.- Vinton Cerf (Computer Scientist often called the father of the internet, Google Internet Evangelist)

Advertising practitioners are interpreters. But unlike foreign language interpreters, ad people must constantly learn new languages. They must understand the language of each new product, and speak the language of each new target audience. Jef I. Richards (Advertising Professor)

Technology innovation is starting to explode and having open-source material out there really helps this explosion. You get students and researchers involved and you get people coming through and building start ups based on open source products. - Tim Berners-Lee (World Wide Web Founder)

The Internet will help achieve "friction free capitalism" by putting buyer and seller in direct contact and providing more information to both about each other.- Bill Gates (Microsoft Chairman)

It's a mistake to predict the size of markets that are so new. This model has shown no signs of slowing down. So we are going to get as much of it as we possibly can, and when we get close to that we'll figure out other problems.- Eric Sbhmidt (Google CEO, Chairman)

2 Online Resources:

"5 Social Media Strategies You Need" by Bob Wheatley, CEO of Wheatley & Timmons.
"One way or the other, brands will play in the social media arena. Some will go there with the correct unselfish (i.e., not treating consumers simply as objects to sell to) approach. Others will arrive through the sheer inertia of an unstoppable media evolution."

Read More.   Free access to article.

"The 2009 Gartner Hype Cycle Special Report evaluates the maturity of 1,650 technologies and trends in 79 technology, topic and industry areas. New Hype Cycles this year include cloud computing, data center power and cooling technologies, and mobile device technologies."

Read More.   Expect to PAY for a full report.