Recently the first official “Twisitor Centre” was launched in the US by Travel Portland, where travellers can connect to the Twisitor Centre to find out holiday / travel information, just like a walk in visitor centre, which relies on Twitter technology, so travellers can plan holidays to the city etc etc.

The use of codes to transfer the “tweets” to the Twisitor Centre is essential to get the correct feedback, visit Travel Mole who reported on the tweeting city.

Twitter and other micro blogging / social networking sites are great to find out local information, like places you are visiting on holiday etc, keeping your Twitter, Facebook, Myspace etc profile public may be risky if you declare too much information, however if you are following people from all over the world, information will be far more accessible, just remember to be careful!!

I’m in the process of putting together some training documents for the multilingual WebCertain taskforce – it isn’t easy…

Although press wire services exist with a pretty standard format in most countries, I’ve come across lots of little, unexpected differences. For example, in Germany the fashion is for press releases with a short headline followed by a short strapline and in China and Korea, personal blogs are used quite differently.

Also, at some point in a PR campaign, you are going to have to communicate with a human being…

Now in the UK, we are happy to send an email with a simple “Hi” to the addressee. Not so in France. that would be insultingly bald. French business-speak is incredibly polite and it reminds me of when Laure was preparing to start at the company. I’d sent her a welcome email (“Hi Laure”) thinking I was being nice and friendly, but unwittingly caused great consternation to her as she debated back and forth how to address her reply to me. Was I a Madame or a Mademoiselle? She didn’t want to offend her new “chief”.

So, such a very simple issue can make the difference between making a new friend or enemy (or a story hitting the front page, or being spiked). What’s our advice?

• Always (always) use a native speaker with experience of the local market – and listen to their advice
• Never think you can cut corners by following an English / UK pro forma of communication
• Get a name for your contact (that is very old advice)
• Good luck!

The Econsultancy Online PR Trends Briefing says that the metric of measurement are crucial for online PR in 2009.

From ClickThrough Marketing: “Metrics such as improvements in search can be an effective way to benchmark online PR, but such measures neglect the wider value of company reputation…”