Created in 2006, Twitter is the love child of mobile phone phenomenon texting and social networking, also referred to as ‘micro-blogging’. The 140 character limit forces its users to be brief about their post, giving snippets of their personal lives, business related news and updates, ‘Which is why a lot of people like Twitter. It forces all of us to get to the point for a change’ (http://blog.journalistics.com/2009/twitter-helps-pr-professionals-get-to-the-point/ ). The site enables its users to follow other people on Twitter, tweet (the content of the micro-blogs), re-tweet (RT) which means forward someone else’s tweet to their follows, favourite and simply reply. This has become common knowledge as the twitter population grows steadily every day. As well as the social aspect of the site, Twitter has become a vital tool in the business world. Public Relations is one business that has taken the micro-blogging site under its wing and manipulated it’s features to their advantage.
With 140 million users and growing, Twitter gives PR agencies access to a vast audience. This audience is one that the PR people can monitor, keeping their ears open for news and trends (when a large amount of people are tweeting a similar word or phrase) and then applying it that to their work. As well as also being able to participate in the monitoring of conversation and trends on Twitter, the website also allows people to respond to tweets, meaning that the PR people can make sure that they are up to date at all times with developments in the field or with the people they are interested in.
It also works as a ‘job pages’ for some PR agencies as some companies and individuals may post on the networking site that they need PR representation, ‘it has evolved into an ongoing resource connecting job seekers with employment opportunities’ (http://mashable.com/2011/04/14/pr-pro-twitter-guide/ ) although this is speaking of a particular Twitter account made for this purpose, the same can be said about the whole of Twitter acting as a job opportunity hosting site.
The most obvious reason why PR professionals love Twitter is because it is another platform for them to promote their campaigns, or clients on. With so many users Twitter presents the opportunity to really get the attention the PR people are looking for. The trending feature of the website, often sparked by the hash-tags (tweets starting with # which then are tracked), could boost the awareness of the campaign, or client the PR agency are representing.
In a time where media is such an influential part of everyday life, a PR agency that is not on Twitter will be over looked, it is an obvious platform PR professionals should be on. Therefore being on Twitter can help establish a PR agency and demonstrate their expertise in the field of social media, which is such an imperative part of today’s society.
There are those though who do not know how to make Twitter work for them as demonstrated on the Huffington Posts blog, the worst 8 Twitter PR fails, which can be read here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/04/worst-twitter-pr-fails_n_844748.html#s261118&title=Marc_Jacobs_Intern .
No comments:
Post a Comment