Apparently NBC’s Today Show is now Twittering.

Yesterday I received a notice that the Twitter user Todayshow was following my feed, which is a gentle way of asking “Hey, can you follow my feed, too?” This is a great example of a large organization that wants to leverage Twitter to promote what they’re up to, but hasn’t quite grasped how to do it properly.

Instead of accusing the Today Show of social network corporate invasion, I thought I’d offer up some advice on how to improve their stream. (This can apply to any organization interested in using Twitter.)

1.) Don’t just force your blog’s RSS feeds into your stream. The (insert post title) and (insert url) tweets quickly become non-human, boring and expected. This makes it seem like you’re only using Twitter as a way to auto-syndicate your blog’s content, and that’s not the stuff Twitter users are into. Twitter-ers like conversation.

2.) Keep the tweets under 140 characters. For instance, we don’t know what this means: “Super Shea and Marvelous Mercer: This morning, Meredith interviewed a very inspirational young woman…” If you want us to tune in or watch your online video content, tell us why she’s inspirational and why we should care in less than 140.

3.) Introduce behind-the-scenes stuff and quirky antecdotes. Tell us what Al Roker is doing right now. Does he drink the office coffee or does he bring his own? What’s Willard Scott’s dressing room like? Convince Matt Lauer to personally type a message. Give your Twitter friends some unique stuff that doesn’t exist in your other communication channels.

4.) Try to keep the tweetcount manageable for followers: Between five and ten per day, please. Only Scoble can get away with more.

5.) Consider the Twitter demographics: They are much more likely to consume technology news, so push tech content in your feed.

To sum up, social mediums must be utilized properly in order to be effective. Signing off.