Another Blog on the Value of Twitter in PR

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By: Matt Clark

I know, I know.  After reading Jennifer Leggio’s post on PR 2.0 I feel stupid writing another Twitter article.  Feel free to throw rotten food at me.  (Waiting)

Okay, back to business.

So when will Twitter really matter?  It doesn’t. - Lets get that straight.  Twitter is nothing but a fad at the moment.  It has no solid business model and has not proven to be a true game changer.  But it’s close.  Don’t get me wrong I love twitter and I think it’s a valuable PR tool.  However, only recently has it started to step up.  Why am I saying this now?   I stole it.

Brian Solis posted an article last week on PR 2.0 (can you tell what blog I was reading today) about St. John’s credentialing Peter Robert Casey as their official “Live Tweeter.”  Sounds cool if you’re a social media junkie, right? Just so we are on the same page, being a social media junkie is the same as being a Star Wars junkie.  It’s cool when you’re with like-minded people, but not in the real world.  (…waiting…waiting…okay my computer didn’t blow up.)

@Peter_R_Casey has 50,238 followers and “is currently among the Top 10 most-followed basketball-related users on Twitter.“  That’s not shabby.  I am sure that St. Johns and Casey will come up with some cool ways to get more followers/fans.  I really the idea of embedding a tweeter at live events with traditional journalists.  This will only work for specific niche audiences - like St. Johns college basketball.  Consider it officially stolen.

Next we have Peter King with SI. He pointed out that Chad Ochocinco of the Bengals is averaging 63 tweets a day (pause…yea that’s a lot). King called Ochocinco “Chad Ochocinco of Eyewitness News,” due to his recent news breaking via Twitter.  That’s didn’t sit right with me at first.  Twitter cannot be more valuable than the real Eyewitness News.

Then King revealed this, “…as of Sunday, 137,679 people were following him. Listening, presumably. It’s not necessarily an apples-to-apples comparison, but as of June, the circulation of the Cincinnati Enquirer was 188,956. He’s being heard the way he wants to be heard, and by a huge segment of Bengaldom.” Having high profile people talk about you and your brand to more followers than most regional newspapers.  Consider it officially stolen.

Listen, none of this is new stuff.  Anyone with ½ a brain knows you want people with strong followings tweeting about your brand.   These two examples just hit that home for me.

Some people may respond with, “So what Ochocinoc has 137k readers? They don’t all actually read his tweets.”  You are right, however, I promise you that 188k people do not read every article in the Cincinnati Enquirer.

So when does Twitter really become a game changer for PR?  Looks like sooner than I thought.