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Twitter for online PR

Twitter is a very useful tool for business to business marketing and PR. I am a regular user of the microblogging social media site which now has 21 million US visitors per month.  Like any good networking tool it has brought me technical support, business ideas, business and a wide network of ‘lose connection’ friends.  Twitter is no longer the social platform for friends updating what they are doing in real time, but a crucial tool for brand marketing.

With a phenomenal 1382% year on year increase in unique users it is the fastest growing social marketing tool and, unlike Facebook with its strong teen and early 20s following, is most popular amongst working adults.

Statistics show that 50% of Twitter users are 35 yrs and older, 80% have no kids, a significant proportion are college grads/ post grads and more than half earn $60K plus per year. However the 18-24s are the fastest growing audience currently.  Probably due to their celebrity obsession (eek!)

But how can Twitter help B2B companies with their public relations?  Here are seven ways (by no means an exhaustive list) that Twitter can help:

1. Build relationships – follow and encourage followers with whom you want to build relationships.  Think carefully about your tweets – choose a nice balance of the professional and the personal.  Don’t think ‘what are you doing’ but ‘how can you add value’ or ‘how can you make this followers life better’?  Know your audience and make sure your 140 characters add advice, drama, desire, interest, or entertainment  (‘addie’) to their reading.  If journalists and the media are following you, you will forge stronger relationships if you get this balance right

2. Micro-campaigns for press releases – submit your most valuable or innovative or interesting online releases from your online media centre or your blog (or elsewhere), give readers and followers a big ‘why’ in the tweet. See each tweet as a powerful marketing message.

3. Online research and content tracking – Twilert, Twitter search etc to search for trending topics and social buzz. Track your most important keywords and use retweets, @replies and direct messaging to reply to those that are most important.  Track people who are retweeting or mentioning you in @replies and follow or reward them with thanks (or both)

4. Adding value through choosing who  to follow – follow inspiring, active and expert social networkers who will add value to your own content

5. Gain support – using your followers and the people you follow to help you gain support for your cause.  Ask them for opinions, advice, feedback

6. Crowdsource – if you need contributions for a feature you are writing, or want feedback on users or expert users to interview for a piece you can crowdsource your posts by requesting help or offering links or mentions of your contributors from Twitter

7. Retweet -  those links that are most in line with your own messages and themes – make sure they are high quality and don’t overdo it (a handful per day will do) this will help to expand your social network and add recognised value

It’s not rocket science.  This way you will gain some valuable and rewarding followers on Twitter, and build lasting social relationships. Over time, you will also find that your online PR coverage increases considerably too.

The brain builds new connections through social contact

Did you know that communication is a huge factor in increasing organisational learning and collective intelligence? Through individuals’ participation in dialogue, conversations and even their use of social media, learning is boosted significantly.

A recent study on social learning at the University of Washington shoiws that social relationships play a significant role in adult learning.  Self-managed learning, done collaboratively with high levels of interaction with others is far more powerful than just reading or watching or listening.  This is because knowledge retention, which is an important aspect of learning, especially as we get older, is only possible when accompanied by human interaction.  Adults need to be socially stimulated to learn.

The use of social media such as forums, twitter, blogs, and other online communities is thought to build cognitive flexibility.  As people using these channels and tools are regularly multi-tasking (ie twittering whilst in meetings), it is thought that this behaviour builds new pathwasy and connections in the brain.  Use of such communications tools is thereby increasing innovation in individuals’ thinking, and helping them to learn and apply learning.

If I think about how I have learnt the skill of video and photography: much of it has been ‘self learning’ through a  mixture of ‘hands on’ trial and error (this is the ‘activist‘ in me) the use of online communities such as expert forums, blogs, twitter, online video and then interacting with other individuals via phone, email etc to ask specific questions, share my thinking and find solutions to my problems.  From this I notice that my own learning improves rapidly, but that by communicating with others, the collective wisdom increases.

It is through dialogue and conversation with others, with the help of communication tools such as those provided through social media, that we learn to learn and learn to innovate.  So learning is really about communicating through conversation and dialogue.  And communication, applied in this way, can boost organisational learning and group collective wisdom; and be a source of innovation.

Productive dialogue and conversation within organisations can increase the organisation’s knowledge capital and increase competitive advantage through learning and innovation. But much of organisational communication and conversation is not productive.  Here are some of the common blocks to learning through dialogue and conversation:

1. Too much opinion stating – people attempt to influence others to their way of thinking rather than understand others point of view
2. Defensiveness to having one’s point of view challenged – being too attached to our opinions and not willing to stay open and curious to others’
3. Assumptions and conclusions – rather than focusing on fact, we tend to be blind to missing data and easily make conclusions and assumptions. This leads to a failure to separate fact from fiction.
4. Lack of reflection in action – not many people have yet developed the ability to reflect on one’s thinking in the midst of action (a great aid to improved dialogue)
5. Poor use and understanding of the deep vs. surface structure of language – ie deletions, generalisations, distortions etc that we all make in everyday conversation (heavily related to 3) above)
6. Lack of good questioning and listening skills – to elicit inquiry of other’s perspectives. 
7. Lack of deep curiosity about others views and opinions – especially when they are different to ours.