Rob Brown FCIPR, chair of CIPR Social Media Panel and editor of Share This Too, a follow up to CIPR book Share This: The Social Media Handbook for PR Professionals, discusses why Twitter is a necessity for PRs.
Twitter is in the news again this time with an imperative to resolve whether it is a force for good or for evil. The answer is simple; it’s neutral, people make it what it is and they can be either.
For PR professionals it’s a vital communications tool. PR people are incorporating Twitter as an essential element in communications strategies. Media organisations have Twitter streams that break news first and that’s a dynamic that the PR industry ignores at its peril.
There are a myriad of reasons for using Twitter. For many it is conversational and conversations build relationships. There’s nothing new in this but Twitter opens the door to dialogue with people that you might not find any other way. Google may be the search engine of choice but Twitter search provides an overlay not available through a traditional search engine. Twitter breaks news before Google can index the stories – so social search is now vital when searching for breaking news. It can also bring a human dimension to the quest for information; asking questions on Twitter can provide a mixture of opinion as well as fact.
There are times when Twitter provides a highly useful and effective alternative to that mainstay of media relations - the press release. When David Cameron alleged that Jimmy Carr was tax dodging he turned to Twitter. Five years ago there would have been a press release and a short statement delivered via a carefully chosen news channel. Jimmy Carr put his statement out on Twitter, even though it took five tweets to get the full apology out. Although Carr didn’t emerge entirely unscathed it was broadly agreed that he did a good job of defusing the story.