By Paul Furiga
Today is a landmark day: In the war of Twitter, Ashton beat CNN (or Ted Turner if you listen to Mr. Kutcher). Everybody is Twittering about what a great milestone this is for Twitter, and that it is. Even Oprah joined in, a sure sign of any pop culture milestone.
But let’s not lose sight of the fact that this is also a landmark day for public relations because, even after Kutcher toted up more than 1 million followers on Twitter, beating the total amassed by CNN’s breaking news Twitter account, this was basically a PR stunt. Neither Ashton nor CNN is going to markedly change anything they do with their Twitter accounts because they clicked past a magic number of followers.
What this whole exercise does point up is the answer to a very important question: Is there a legitimate business use for Twitter? I can’t provide answers for many business disciplines but I certainly can for public relations. And the Ashton versus CNN battle demonstrates that for PR, the answer is a resounding yes.
In fact, there are many legitimate business PR uses for Twitter. Here are my current top ten. Please feel free to join the conversation and add your own:
1. Breaking news: CNN is one of hundreds of news organizations that clearly understand the power of delivering breaking news via Twitter. Given the ability to send pictures as well as headlines, Twitter gets my vote for best current breaking news delivery system. It’s not just for the news media, though. Any business with breaking news can use Twitter in the same manner that CNN or the New York Times do. Product launches, earnings reports and many other legitimate breaking news items will interest followers of a business.
2. Stoking your public profile: Ashton Kutcher is a celebrity. You may love him or hate him. You certainly heard more about him since he announced this little challenge than you probably have in weeks if not months. Twitter is a great way to have immediate impact on your public presence. And you don’t have to be a celebrity to do it (though you will have to work at it long and hard as Ashton has if you want to amass the kind of numbers he has).
3. Media engagement: Journalists have been among the earliest adopters of Twitter not only because it’s fast but also because it’s brief. Most journalists spend too much of their day weeding through the chaff of their snail mail, e-mail and voice mail to find the rare wheat kernel that might make a story. Because of the permission aspect of following and being followed in Twitter, and its 140-character brevity, journalists love Twitter. They can get less overall information and manage it more quickly with Twitter. Get your business connected via Twitter to the right journalists, and you’re more likely to be heard than by using other, older means of reaching journalists.
4. Stakeholder engagement: The immediacy and reach of Twitter make it a powerful tool to build communities of like-minded folks who, when united by geography, can quickly mobilize for a “Tweetup,” the in-person gathering of folks united by Twitter. No longer does a business (or any other organization with a committed and loyal following) need to drill through a phone bank, an e-mail list with spam and filtering considerations, or other less effective “one to many” communications channels to get immediate results.
5. Availability management: These same benefits of Twitter now make it possible to manage public appearances, announcements and other events on the fly. It’s not that much different to use Twitter to update the media or stakeholders on a change in meeting place or time than it is to Tweet your friends and let them know you’re running late to a restaurant.
6. News-driven availability management: One of the characteristics of truly breaking news is that none of us can predict the story of the day. If you are in a business or organization that has something legitimate to say about the news of the day, no communications medium can get you in front of the right people more quickly than Twitter, and this ability will only grow as Twitter grows. Have an expert on mortgage-backed securities? Terrorism? Economic stimulus? If that’s the news of the day, proactive and appropriate Twitter activity can lead to news coverage (and greater numbers of followers on Twitter).
7. Trend observation: Twitter’s search capability and the use of hashtags to categories Tweets by topic make it possible to gain real-time insight into public discourse in a way that is only beginning to be appreciated. Again, the Twitterverse is fairly small today, even as it grows by leaps and bounds, so it’s unfair to say that what you find in the Tweetstream really represents public opinion on any issue. But it’s getting there and any public relations pro or business that isn’t exploring these Twitter features is missing out on a great deal that will improve their public relations efforts.
8. Trend shaping: Closely related to determining what people are talking about on Twitter is the potential to proactively influence the Twitter discussion on any topic. This is a classic public relations strategy that’s being transferred to the Twitterverse. This is a corollary to what Ashton Kutcher did. Ashton merely wanted to hit a number of followers; what if he also wanted to make a particular statement (and some might argue that he did) with his Twitter activity of the last week? It’s not only a matter of who has the most followers; it’s a matter of who can mobilize the most followers to join with them in a particular cause.
9. News faving: OK, this one is my term. Another of Twitter’s unique capabilities, “retweeting,” allows you to let the Twitterverse know how much you like a news story in a way that was not previously possible, at a speed that’s truly remarkable. Some of best examples of this are tech gurus such as Guy Kawasaki or Robert Scoble who are frequently extending and exploring their capabilities in this area by pushing out to their hundreds of thousands of followers news items that they like.
10. News rating: My last one for now. Given all of these capabilities, it seems only a matter of time before Twitter activity becomes the latest measure of a particular news organization’s relative clout, a celebrity’s popularity, or a company’s brand reputation. Forget your ratings, who cares how many saw your last movie, and so what if your latest product launch bombed. How are you doing on Twitter? Do you have “enough” followers? Will journalists earn question time with the president based on the number of their Twitter followers? Will celebrities haul in their Twitter stats when negotiating movie deals? And will Wall Street, after its recent failures with so many other indicators, begin adding a “Twitter factor” to its corporate valuations?
It’s hard to say where all this is heading now that we’ve had a triple witching event involving a celebrity, America’s TV trend maker and the world’s leading cable news organization. One thing’s certain: More of us know that Twitter is a noun and not just a verb frequently used to describe the musical vocalizations of small birds.
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Paul Furiga is president and CEO of WordWrite Communications.
