I’m of two minds on this.  On one hand, there are plenty of PR people who have far more knowledge about the profession than I that are not on Twitter.  Does that make me better than them?  No, but it does mean that I understand an increasingly important side of public relations on a level that they can’t achieve from anecdotal accounts of what it is and how to use it.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t trust an electrician who didn’t have lights in his house… why should I expect clients to trust my opinion on a specific aspect of social media if I’ve only ever heard about it and visited the “about” page?

As I’ve said before, PR isn’t about the tools, but the new tools that are available to us every day of the week are changing the game so drastically that if we’re not on top of what’s happening in that arena, there’s no way we can be expected to provide our clients with a full understanding of the environment their brand is operating in, and that means either missing opportunities that would have been a perfect fit, or convincing them to throw money at everything that sparkles along the way.  Either way, the client loses.

It doesn’t mean that we have to spend our entire day on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Second Life or whatever the next big thing that comes out tomorrow happens to be, but it is our responsibility to at least engage with these communities, assess the tool fairly, and understand how it will affect current and potential clients.  Otherwise, we’re trying to fix the wiring while we’re working in the dark.

Bonus link: Todd Defren’s excellent post on why PR folk should be using Twitter.