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Twitter turned three years old this weekend and those who are now converts/addicts must wonder how we ever lived without it. And while Marshall Kirkpatrick over at ReadWriteWeb has taken the time to hail its significance to social media, Forrester analyst, Jeremiah Owyang, is describing how companies are starting to ask questions about Twitter that suggest it’s now considered a serious business tool.

But how is it working for companies and their customers in the UK?

Travel writer, Mark Hodson, has been tasked by the Times to vet the Twitter performance of various travel companies , and interesting reading it makes.

And taking the example of each travel company in turn provides a handy illustration of some of the better principles of using Twitter. So…

Easy Jet - A real human being makes good customer service accessible and fixes problems.

Lonely Planet - Gathers useful/interesting travel tips from real people and makes them easily searchable via a hash tag.

Brittany Ferries - Shares good deals with its Twitter followers.

Mr & Mrs Smith - Is responsive to customer queries.

Black Tomato - Is conversational rather than salesy and drives people to other content online.

Visit Britain - Shares useful ideas.

Thomson Holidays - Communicates to customers’ concerns in a crisis (in this case, flights to places affected by Swine Flu).

Hodson also takes a look at some travel Twitter feeds distinctly underperforming - namely Virgin Atlantic and London City Airport - which share a similar problem: seemingly having no clear idea of what to do on Twitter or why. 

But his appraisal of Butlins’ Twitter feed seems a bit harsh. After all, it provides offers; monitors and responds to discussion of its brand (including Hodson’s piece in the Times); finds and re-uses positive, third party mentions of Butlins; provides teasers for new openings; directs followers to other content online and handles customer complaints openly and sympathetically. Maybe Mr Hodson just doesn’t like Butlins; or maybe I’m still overwhelmed by my 1975 visit to Butlins at Bognor Regis that’s never been bettered.

OK, I exaggerate…

(Thanks to @adrian_johnson for bringing the original article to our attention)

Interesting chat with a senior news contact at The Times about future direction of the paper. Seems to be disquiet over the emphasis being placed on news versus comment within the paper, to the extent that some journalists estimate that the actual reporting of news has halved in recent months as new editor, James Harding, concedes that the internet ‘does’ news and reasons that newspapers should become more reflective.

In common with many other nationals (especially Will Lewis’ Telegraph), Harding is looking to the Daily Mail, pinching staff and essentially treating the audience as ‘consumers’, looking for more planned news and features (I recall Harding nicked one of the Mail’s best planners) and piling resources into the Saturday paper.

It’s not news to say that papers are investing in high-profile comment writers but it’s interesting to note the extent that middle and junior ranking news journalists are asked to write comment-type pieces, often being asked to offer technical insight into topics they knew nothing about until that morning’s news conference! 

Has important implications for (good) PRs. Need to think ahead more, rather than just ringing the newsdesk at 9am and saying ‘I’ve got a story’! it also means a greater demand for trusted experts who can translate issues well enough for a journalist to write that insightful comment piece, especially stock market and banking experts in the current climate.

The upshot of this week’s PR Week crisis comms event should have PR practitioners breaking out in sweaty palms.

And why not? After all, it seems like common sense that journalists don’t like being lied to.

To emphasise the point - and with great foreboding - The Times home news editor Martin Barrow warned PROs: ‘If we know you’re lying, we will work extra hard to ensure we expose you and your company.’

In the steaming cauldron of PR sins, saying “no comment” suggests you have something to hide; trying to “spin” your communications is a way of dressing up something nasty as something nice and, finally, “lying” is just plain stupid.

Anyone with the job of speaking to the media on behalf of their organisation could do worse than take the advice put succinctly in Frank Jefkins’ book, Public Relations: “If PR is to be credible, it must avoid false image making…the media are prejudiced about PR to the extent of expecting false image polishing.”

If you’re lucky, the instances of having to break bad news to the wider world while journalists or bloggers bay for blood at your gates will be rare. And when it does happen, there are ways of tackling it - but lying isn’t one of them.