I joined Twitter this year and I’ve had a FaceBook account for ages. It’s interesting to read the instant news tweets, family and friend’s reports, and opinions on both sites but the fastest growing use of these sites is now for promoting businesses, for both selling goods and services.
There’s a passion that some people have for the product they sell or work with and this comes through in what they write, especially on Twitter. It’s so easy to see who really believes in what they are selling compared with those being paid to promote a product or service.
Even so, I missed seeing that the @powerplate girls were, in fact, P.R. people, simply doing a job, paid to promote a product, in this case the PowerPlate machine.
I really should have realised it earlier, watching their tweets about Cindy Crawford and other celebrities using the machines yet when I click over to the the various celebrities mentioned I find they have just trialed a machine or just mention it in passing. Why it matters which celebrity uses your product I can’t understand but then many females and a smattering of males will follow blindly if they know an “important person” does something. The @powerplate girls also link to other social media sites with blogs and “exercise of then week” pictures and instructions. I’ve got no problem with this, it just seemed that something was missing from their posts, some enthusiasm maybe, especially when posts were re-tweeted over and over by the other PowerPlate people. Sometimes they post about their own experiences and they get excited; these tweets are more real.
The owners and instructors who work day by day with vibration machines and see their clients results are the ones whose posts I like to watch. They show enthusiasm and that they enjoy what they are doing.
P.R people posting about a health and fitness product – well it says a lot doesn’t it!
