The NY Times has a story today about a Twitter account set up by NASA. The account reads like first person messages from the the Phoenix Lander which safely arrived on Mars earlier this week. (The human behind the account is Veronica McGregor, news services manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena CA.)
I clicked over to the account, which is regularly responding to questions and comments directed it’s way, as well as providing updates about the mission. I was surprised to find that MarsPhoenix is being followed by over 10,000 people, yet follows back not one.
A typical PR or promotional Twitter account follows a large number, hoping enough will follow back. MarsPhoenix took a different route, relying on outside channels and word of mouth to build up a follower base. And quite successfully!
Marketers, PR folks, and Tweeters in general, take note! If you build good content, they will come!
2 Comments
Excellent observation! I wish other promo accounts did the same.
i absolutely agree that this is a great use of the tech. it’s great for the reasons you’ve mentioned as well as being useful and accessible to people not considered geeky.
another example of this is the flickr account for the US library of congress. they’re slowly adding their archives to flickr and letting people tag the work to help in improving the utility of their archives.
the library of congress at flickr can be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/