America's Sweetheart

Ever since the Kanye West and Taylor Swift debacle at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, TSwift has been cast as the young, pretty and respectable female icon for today's youth. Unlike some other used-to-be teen starlets, TSwift exudes a sense of innocence. This is not the kind of innocence that's dipped in "I'm so sweet, why don't you come turn me bad?" She's for real; a genuine good girl.

This could either be a PR nightmare or a PR gift only bestowed upon someone as lucky as her publicist, Paula Erickson.

After Tina Fey and Amy Poehler cracked a seemingly casual joke at the Golden Globes in Jan. 2013 about Swift's romantic life, Swift came back with a quote from Madeleine Albright saying "There's a special place in hell for women who don't help other women."

Anybody who's aware of Fey and Poehler's humor knows that if anything, a joke coming from them is out of pure fun- no cattiness implied. From a PR standpoint everybody seems to agree with the idea that Swift should have replied perhaps with a smile and a laugh rather than a defensive poke at Fey and Poehler.

The last thing Swift needs is to lose her place in the celebrity world as the cute and fun sweetheart.

Matt Ragas, an assistant communications professor at DePaul University said, “part of PR is words and messaging, but a huge part of is also actions and behaviors."

Although the comment offended Swift, the words were based on truth (whether she wants to believe that or not). Obviously, she seems to be doing pretty well with her "breakup song" theme and she should continue doing so; don't try to change your image because frankly, you're the one who created it.

TSwift just needs to brush it off and move on without trying to make a big deal out of it- just portray the confident, female attitude she's been giving off the whole time.

Quality not quantity

I remember back in the days of MySpace when all that mattered was the coolness of your background and the cuteness of your profile picture. There was even an unspoken service where you could add someone who guaranteed they could get you more friends. More online friends equals a better experience, right?

Being somewhat new to Twitter, one of the things I love most about the medium is that it simply does not matter how many followers you have, or how many people you are following. With Twitter it’s the quality, not the quantity which shows the great potential that it has to be a tool for the professional world.

Sometimes I see comments on celebrity feeds I shamelessly follow that practically spam the tweet with “follow me for 200 followers” copied and pasted a hundred times. Why? What’s the point of having so many followers? Chances are they don’t even offer any decent content, just a bunch of “this burrito is delicious #yummy” or “just brushed my teeth LOLZ #suds” tweets that would only take up scroll space on my feed.

One great analogy I read from this article from Aaron Gottlieb from PR Daily (who I follow on Twitter, in fact) is: “Michael Jordan wasn’t great because of the number of people who bought his jerseys. He earned greatness through his play. Everything else was a reward.” That makes perfect sense to me.

The bottom line is that if you make your Twitter input something that’s valuable to other people, eventually people will find you and see that you offer information from which they can benefit. I don’t follow CNN or my local news provider because I want to be cool, it’s because I enjoy reading the things they tweet and it makes me more aware of the world around me.

I think if Twitter members saw social media that way then we would all be a little less annoyed whenever we check in with the little blue bird.