Twitter’s evolution or what I call, it’s “True Turns” has been interesting to watch since their infancy stages, to say the least.  From short status updates in the beginning, to business links and blog readership growth, MLM influx to scandals and even public Twitter fights.  Watching the service from a distance, can certainly be more fun than people-watching at a crowded mall on a Saturday.

Recently though, since working with well regarded local news outlets, politicians and National Celebrity figures on a daily basis, I’ve had to look into how celebs are using Twitter and push away, how their publicists “think” the service should be utilized.  This is not easy and I can openly state publicists need to re-think Twitters value and how their clients should be leveraging it.

Although Twitter has always provided tremendous ability to network and market yourself, celebs and their teams have woken up and realized, with the amount of followers they can attain, the service is the ultimate form of driving traffic for them, their people and who they represent.  Although this is certainly true, it can/will weaken what I call the “four corners” of the Twitter foundation:

1. Authenticity

2. Engagement

3. Transparency

4. Interaction

It’s no secret that in the past 15 months, hoards of celebs have ingratiated and flooded the Twitter service to “connect with their fans” The truth of the matter from a quick study into a few well known accounts is,  90% of celebs have figured out, like the previous business users that jumped onto the bandwagon, that they can push traffic to themselves.  Some in fact, really need to re-think their approach as they can appear just as spammy as some people we rant & rave about who should not be on Twitter.

Let’s rock:

The One-Sided, Public Relations - Because I have a New Album Coming Out, Account Winner Goes To…

Fantastic engagement with your fans, Eminem!  New album dropping? I won’t follow anyone YO!  I’ll just spam the world with confusing and hypnotic one-sided messages. That should work.

The YAY!!! I’m New to Twitter, I can’t wait to have 1 Million Followers Clueless Account:

You’d think a media mogul would a few people on staff which would show poor Oprah the value prop of their new Twitter account strategy is to engage and interact with her fans?  To add insult to injury, the only people she has interacted with thus far are Shaq, Hugh Jackman, Larry King, Demi Moore and well, twitter founder Evan Wiliams. Those 11 people she follows are celebs as well.  “They” (the folks at Harpo) did however, figure out she does need a custom Twitter background for branding…go figure.

@oprah, why not proactively engage your audience with upcoming segments, tips, show ideas etc and bring that into your broadcasts.  It will work much better than screaming at everyone in all caps.

P.S we don’t care you aren’t wearing a weave.

The I’m a new mommy with a new business account!

I’ve been following Brooke for quite a while now, to see how she handles her Twitterself.  It’s interesting, because she has a firm handle on providing insight and transparency into her life, uses 3rd party tools, yet fails to respond to the people, or in her case the HUGE target audience she could be tapping into…#WAHM’s (work at home moms) I set up a search to monitor the traffic of people attempting to interact with her and it’s tremendous. Opportunities missed, one sided communication… accomplished.

The I’m running out of titles, because all these celebs seem to make the same mistakes account:

Like above, Super Brad only sees value in following his celeb friends, hasn’t been shown the ropes of Twitter 101 and thus far has only posted one tweet of value to support a charity… although, that was his last tweet and hasn’t responded to people inquiring about the charity. Tisk Tisk!

And finally…

Extra! Extra! Mario has a fantastic opportunity to create viewership, drive ratings and interact with fans and viewers through his Twitter account. In typical fashion, he follows celeb friends, has no branding integrated into his profile and has not responded to anyone writing him recently.

Conclusion:

While it was exciting when celebs jumped into the Twitter pond, the shiny glamor is wearing off quickly.  The foundations described above are what keep people interested in following each other and one sided-communication to drive traffic for the celebs, is a flash in the pan tactic. Reach out, interact with your fans and you’ll see how fast your own customer loyalty, profile and viral velocity will take off.