Social Media and Public Relations

Soledad  O’Brien is best known for her award-winning and critically acclaimed documentaries on some of  the most important news stories facing the world today.  One of her most popular documentaries is the  Black in America series. The two-part series  began in 2008.  O’Brien also hosted Latino in America in 2009, a spin-off of  Black in America.   Currently, O’Brien is the anchor for the CNN morning show, Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien, which started in January 2012 and airs every weekday 7 am to 9 am.

Aside from being a brilliant reporter, Soledad O’Brien does a great job of promoting  her TV show, work,book and the CNN network  through her use of Twitter .  O’Brien’s feed is a full update of what she did in her professional life for the day and also a comprehensive summary of various news stories that were covered. O’Brien has more than 16,000 tweets and 217,000 followers.  She tweets ever couple hours and the majority of her tweets include a link to were you can find more information about a certain topic. She retweets her colleagues and  mentions she receives.  

The thing I most admire about O’Brien’s twitter feed is that it is  professional, but not too  journalism centered that it is not accommodating to the everyday person.   It is difficult to maintain a professional tone while only having 140 characters, but O’Brien does it well. Her Twitter feed enhances her image and supplements for her show and documentaries.

Anyone with a Twitter should follow Soledad O’Brien, especially aspiring journalists.  One reason is because she is one of the best at what she does and seeing what she tweets about allows people to see the types of things she finds both interesting and news worthy.  Reading her tweets will be  benficial to a young and inexperienced journalist.

Another reason why O’Brien is worth following is because she uses Twitter to promote her brand in a genuine manner.  Often when a person is promoting themselves on any social network  they tend to over promote, which is damaging.  It’s all about how you word what you say.  O’Brien promotes herself throughout her entire feed in a tactful and tasteful way.