Friday, January 27, 2012

The PR Need for Twitter


Catherine Paneral
Jour 4460
Blog TwoTweedle-lee-dee-dee-dee….Tweet Tweet: The PR Need for Twitter

What do the three following lines all have in common?
·         3 bodies recovered following collapse of several buildings in Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian officials say - @BBCNews
·         BREAKING: Three people have been stabbed to death in far East Dallas. We have a crew on the scene. #breakingnews.
·         Two Buildings Collapse in Rio De Janeiro—@nytimes

If you said they were things happening all over the world that were tweeted within minutes of each other, you are right and deserve some sort of praise.

Professor Bufkins stresses how important it is for PR practitioners for be Twitter savvy.  Twitter allows us to constantly be updated with what is going on in the world. It keeps us informed. In addition to following our friends, we are following news teams and career professionals. When we check our twitter feed we can receive updates from Fox4, CBS11 and Breaking News. Not only will I receive updates about what is going on in the DFW area, but I will also know what’s going on in the country as well as the world. By simply clicking “Follow”, twitter feed can easily over flow with updates.
A tweet can go viral almost instantly. Last weekend CBS tweeted that Joe Paterno had died. Within the hour he was alive again. He never died in the first place. While that is not exactly a positive use of Twitter, it does show how quickly a tweet can spread.

Twitter is in. This fancy website has grown significantly in the last two years and continues to grow. According to the report, “How Twitter is Changing: A new study reveals Twitter’s new direction,”<http://www.briansolis.com/>, “Twitter.com earned just over 100 million visitors in October, up 79 percent from 2009.” Also, 44% of twitter users signed up between Jaunary 2010 and August 2012.

I read a useful article that lists several different ways Twitter is useful to PR professionals. In “The PR Pro’s Guide to Twitter, it explained how Twitter allows us to connect with reporters and news mediums. When North Texas experienced a small earthquake a few months ago, I, along with many others, reached out to social media apps like Twitter to see if others had felt the same thing. Later that evening, the news referenced several tweets about the earthquake.

The article also said Twitter can strengthen crisis communication. “If you’re not quick, you’re not relevant. PR pros need to understand how to manage a crisis in 140-character bursts of information. <http://www.mashable.com/>” Many businesses are monitoring what is being said about them on Twitter. If someone has an issue with a specific service, that business can jump on that tweet before the issue gets worse. Talk about improved customer service.

Finally the article talked about using Twitter as a “crowd source research and solve problems” tool. If you need a service or recommendation Twitter can help you out. Once you build a following base of knowledgeable and experienced professionals, you can tweet questions and trust that you will receive helpful responses.



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