Remember those commercials for pro basketball a few years ago when smiling, enthusiastic celebrities faced the camera and said, 'NBA Action... it's FAN-tastic!' Chevy Chase did one stating 'NBA Action ... it's not bad.'
I feel the same way about Twitter. After reading the hype about the power of posting, keys to building lists, finding unique ways to contact journalists, tools to build Twitter cards, awesome chat groups, quadrupling your followers, posting six-second videos, cool GIFs and other tricks, it seemed Twitter Action would be nothing less than fantastic.
It's not that as easy as advertised and in many cases, not always successful. Like a marriage or the last season of 'Downton Abbey,' Twitter takes a lot of time and effort, and there's some frustration involved. Remember, just because Rolling Stone tells you the latest Kanye West is a masterpiece (spoiler alert: it's not) and it will change the way you listen to music forever, doesn't mean you should delete all your Beatles, U2, Michael Jackson and Black Keys music.
Much about Twitter is hype, and the net is full of 'Instantly Turbocharge your PR efforts!' posts that make it appear if you don't spend 12 hours a day on Twitter, subscribe to services like Hootsuite, Topsy and Tagboard, you can't participate in public relations.
I've read dozens of articles, some books and many posts to find the best uses of Twitter to augment media relations. Three social media experts were interviewed - author Andreas Ramos - (@Andreas_Ramos) '#TwitterBook: How to Really Use Twitter,' ; Max Benavidez, @MaxBenavidez, the Associate Vice President of Public Affairs at Claremont McKenna College, and a PhD in New Media; and Grant Marek, @Grant_Marek,Senior Editor for Thrillist, a trendy site for men in their 20s that makes it appear everyone's enjoying a party with Russian super-models, anti-gravity boots and craft beer from Oregon.
If you're in PR, or trying to practice PR, you're in the matchmaking business. You're trying to connect and amplify yourself, your client or your story to a wider, mass audience, via traditional or social media. If Twitter can help you, then it's a useful tool. But there are only so many hours in the day.
For PR professionals and entrepreneurs, there are three main reasons to use Twitter:
Announcements. You want to tell the public something about you, your business or your client such as a new product, an award, an upcoming event, or introduction into a new market; or to keep your audience updated during a crisis or emergency. Research. Find out what your competitors, clients, friends, media or influencers are tweeting about. Networking. To meet new influencers, clients, friends, competitors or reporters and follow them and get them to follow you.
In Five Easy Steps, here's a guide what you need to know about Twitter and Public Relations, starting with the basics.
#1 - What is Twitter?
'Facebook is like a party in your backyard,' says Ramos in his book. 'You invite 100 friends and family. When you talk, only those around you can hear you, not the entire party, not the neighborhood, not the city. You can't post a message that can be seen by the one billion people on Facebook. And when you post on Facebook to your friends, Facebook won't show your message to all of your friends. It shows the message to only about 15% of your friends.'
'Twitter is like the Egyptian revolution. Everyone mills around in chaos. Everything goes out to everyone on all sides; friends, enemies, demonstrators, the government, the army, journalists, and the rest of the world.' Unlike Facebook, Twitter restricts users to 140 characters for each Tweet so there's a premium on short, punchy writing rather than extended rants.
#2 - How do you start?
'Many PR folks jump onto Twitter without first learning how to use it,' says Benavidez. 'Start by setting up a test account, spend time on the network seeing how people in your field and related fields use it. In particular, look at how journalists and key bloggers in your field use it. Wait to make a pitch until you are comfortable using it. Start with subtle engagement.'
Marek told the website Muckrack he recommends searching by hashtag or hashtag crawling. 'If you aren't including hashtags in your tweets, you're doing something wrong. I follow over 2,000 people, which means I only see snippets of what those people are saying in my feed on any given day, but when it comes to hashtags that matter to us, I scroll through ALL OF THEM, whether it's #sfmuni or #bart or #burningman or #saas (software as a service.)'
There's a very good post by Shonali Burke about the importance of joining Twitter chats, which helped her network with her peers, obtain speaking engagements, and meet potential clients. Lists are the primary tool for everyone wanting to organize information. 'A list on Twitter is simply a group organized around a theme,' says Benavidez. 'For example, journalists who cover Wall Street ... Why is this important? This helps you organize your Twitter feed in easy to view categories.' To begin, simply go to the gear button in the top right, click Lists then Create Lists. This was recently upgraded and users can now create up to 1,000 lists with up to 5,000 accounts, probably more than most of us will ever need.
#3 - How do I get followers? This is a top question for anyone starting out or stalling out on Twitter. In other words, I want to be influential! Author Ramos cautions that many followers on Twitter, especially for celebrities or politicians, are not real. Ramos ran the statistics through StatusPeople.com for the 18.4 million users for Kim Kardashian. The site showed seven million or 38% of her followers were fake, and another six million were inactive accounts. Only 5.3 million, or 29%, were authentic.
'It's not necessary to have 100,000 followers,' Ramos says. 'You can have only two followers (your mom and your cat) and that's fine, because your tweets are available to everyone on Twitter.'
That being said, there's a fantastic article on Twiends, which bills itself as a 'leading directory of social media users.' Just to summarize some of the ways to build a following, they offer some great tips to boost your audience.
Advertise on Twitter: 'They offer solutions for promoting your profile, promoting your tweets, or promoting trends. Each method gives you a slightly different way to get your message across.' Run a contest: 'Offer a good prize and make sure you clearly communicate the rules of entry. If your prize is related to your brand then it can also help find targeted followers who are interested in your area of expertise.' Join a Directory: There are dozens of directories of Twitter users online, including Twiends, WeFollow, and Twellow. Add yourself to as many directories as you can find under the proper categories, and you will begin to see some users following you from these sites. Guest blogging or blogging about your twitter account. 'This strategy works very well if you can give readers an incentive to follow you.' Adding Twitter widget. The author recommends adding the widget to your LinkedIn account that displays your tweets, and doing to the same for your blog. Video tutorial. 'Creating video tutorials for your area of expertise is a great way to get 'relevant' exposure for yourself. Place your Twitter username in various places in the video, including the end, and if people feel they have learnt something from you then they may be inclined to follow you.' Speak at conferences. 'The next time you're giving a presentation at a seminar or conference, mention your Twitter account. If you are using presentation software or an on-screen image during your speech, display your username on screen.' If you get quoted in the media, include your Twitter handle if the reporters allows it. #4 - Do I need a Dashboard?
Maybe. If you are a big organization like a university or a corporation, you definitely need at least one to monitor and organizer information. If you are a solo practitioner, small firm or entrepreneur, it depends on how much energy and money (some are free, some are not) you want to spend. Here are some of the top dashboards along with links and descriptions of what they do. You may want to sign up for the free or trial services first. (Note: I do not work for or personally recommend any of these sites.)
Hootsuite. 'Social media management for any organization. Manage social networks, schedule messages, engage your audiences, and measure ROI right from the dashboard. '
Topsy. From Wikipedia: ' A social search and analytics company ... The company is a certified Twitter partner and maintains a comprehensive index of tweets, numbering in hundreds of billions, dating back to Twitter's inception in 2006. Topsy makes products to search, analyze and draw insights from conversations and trends on the public social websites including Twitter and Google+.'
'Search any hashtag ... Tagboard uses hashtags to search for and collect public social media within seconds of being posted to networks like Twitter and Facebook. Robust tools offer the power to select specific posts to feature on websites, in broadcast TV, and on large displays.'
WeFollow. 'Wefollow is a directory of prominent people organized by interests ... This means you can search for people by interest and sort them by what we call their Prominence Score. This ranking system lets you quickly discover, follow and learn from the most prominent people around the world.'
Friend or Follow. 'Friend or Follow is designed to help you increase the signal to noise ratio of your social media network. We help you curate and manage the people you follow on services like Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr, by giving you the ability to quickly and easily sort, filter, follow, and unfollow your contacts. Get rid of the riff-raff in your social stream and fill it with quality contacts.
#5 - How do I contact journalists?
This is a tricky subject. Some PR experts say it's a great idea to approach journalists on Twitter, others, including me, are highly skeptical. Some reporters are happy to communicate on Twitter, others are turned off.
Two years ago this column first approached this subject for social media in general in Forbes, but since things change so quickly, we revisited the topic, just for Twitter.
First, the Yes answer. 'I get 1,000 emails a day,' says Grant Marek of Thrillist. 'Why compete with those 999 other emailers when you could shoot me a tweet and compete with nine other people? A zillion times out of a zillion I'll reply back on Twitter and here's why: being forced to distill a pitch down to 140 characters or less is the ultimate PR exercise. It forces PR pros to cut all of the crap (fake quotes from execs, 'Hi there, how was your weekend'?, 33 picture attachments nobody could possibly want) and get to the nut of why I should care.'
Now, here's the No response. Jason Feifer, the Senior Editor of Fast Company, was asked if he minds being contacted and pitched by publicists on Twitter.
'I'm very happy to answer that question,' Feifer stated. 'Journalists often joke that, like, 75% of our Twitter followers are publicists. (The other 25% are probably bots.) That's fine-I realize it makes good business sense for publicists to follow journalists, so you see what we're talking about and are interested in. And occasionally some of those publicists engage like normal Twitter users, replying to me with a joke or comment. That's cool. I'll often tweet back. I've had some publicist friends-request me on Facebook, which I'm less into, unless I've really become friendly with the publicist. I think of Facebook as a place just for my friends. And I always get publicists requesting LinkedIn connections with me, which I don't understand at all. Isn't that for people who have actually worked together? I always reject.' For direct pitching on Twitter, Feifer is not a fan. 'No, no, never. I absolutely hate when PR people pitch me on Twitter. On principle alone, I will never respond or take a look at what they've sent me. Same goes for Facebook, where I've actually been pitched once or twice. These are social places; they're not appropriate places for pitches. And if you send me something on LinkedIn... well, I guess that's a more appropriate place, but I almost never check LinkedIn (does anyone?) so it'll go unnoticed. Email is the only appropriate pitching medium.'
Rick Newman, a Columnist for Yahoo Finance, falls somewhere between Feifer and Marek on this subject. 'I don't mind Twitter pitches, although I can't think of a good one I ever got in that format,' Newman says. 'It's not the method of pitching that's a problem, it's the quality. The vast majority of pitches suck. (Sorry.) A lot of the time you can tell that some hapless PR soul is pitching the way a client instructed him or her to pitch and probably knows it's going nowhere. The bad pitches are the cookie-cutter variety that seem to take no account of what I cover, what's in the news or what might even constitute news in the first place. If they're bad pitches in person and bad by email, they'll be bad via Twitter. If I ever saw a good pitch on Twitter I'd probably jump on it the same as if it arrived any other way. Sadly, I don't think that's ever happened.
Next week, we will continue the discussion with Advanced Twitter Tips and Tricks for PR Pros. If you have any tips, please contact me at @robwynne or rob@wynnepr.com and let me know if you think Twitter Action is fantastic, or just 'not bad.'
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