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deliberately(Read time = ~2 minutes) With only 140 characters, body language missing… no context or context of only 1/2 a conversation and no ability to “look your counterpart in the eye”… are you communicating well?  Is the messaging coming across the way you intend?

Double think before you click, or risk suffering the consequences,.

Real time case study:  An electronic firm last week issued news as part of a product line refresh.  Features and functionality were nicely added.  An editor for a European publication covering the story dropped on “creative” headline playing off current television jargon:   “(company name) pimps out new (XXX product name)…”.  No sooner than the story hit, tweets began to fly – exactly as I’m sure the editor wanted.

Inside the client company, angst occurred despite the story content being very positive.  Use of “pimp” in the headline caused many to argue against re-tweets and references. After an email flurry, the more younger marketers quickly pointed out a distinction between use of the word as a verb (ie, “pimping out your ride”) v. use of the word as a noun.  The former is actually a positive reference for “refresh”, “retool”, and/or “re-spin”.

The discussion brought to mind one of the difficulties facing marketers, Agencies and consultants when dealing w/Twitter, in particular.  the real-time nature of communications can often cause fingers to fly across the keyboard ending in “enter” w/out sufficient time for thinking or understanding.

Add now Google’s testing of its Wave (new email platform) application with keystroke-by-keystroke visibility and there will soon be another very misunderstood-prone platform available.

Most of us have experienced receiving email responses predicated on only the first sentence or two… worse, email responses based only on a subject line and zero reading of the actual email body itself. (I confess, I’m guilty here). So, just a word of caution as highlighted by last week’s client experience and a classic case of Twitter misunderstanding. 

Go fast, but slowly.

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