The difference between popularity and influence is a hot topic in public relations circles right now. It was Fast Company’s foray into measuring social media influence based on retweets as one of the key criteria that ignited a firestorm of discussion on the issue. What does the ability to garner a retweet say about a person? That he or she is popular, influential or automatically both? Can someone be popular without being influential and vice versa?
One needs to look no farther than the history of why our presidents have been elected and how they have fared in office for an explanation. To make my point, I’m going to analogize votes to retweets. I know. It sounds blasphemous. How can something as sacred and powerful as a vote be taken down to the level of a retweet? It’s easy. Two words and one letter: George W. Bush.
When he was running for office, President Bush was popular. Remember, he was the guy people wanted to have a beer with and people voted him into office for that reason.
I think back in the day Bush would have gotten his fair share of retweets if Twitter would have been around over a decade ago. He reminds me of the most popular kid in school who was always the one getting elected class President.
When viewed this way, votes or retweets doesn’t mean that someone is automatically going to make a sustainable impact on the future of the country or school, but it certainly puts him or her in the position to significantly shape the lives of many.
Once in office, Bush couldn’t have made the impact he did on his own. I think most of us can agree that it was Dick Cheney who was the influential one, the official ghost tweeter putting the words into Bush’s mouth. Without Cheney, Bush was a guy with the ability to generate a lot of retweets, but no skill to change how people thought and acted. He would have been a president more like Warren Harding who was elected based on his stellar looks and undeniable charm, as Malcolm Gladwell explains in Blink. But, absent his Dick Cheney, Harding was another pretty face relegated to the footnotes of history.
On the flipside, Jimmy Carter is considered to be one of the most unpopular presidents in history. I don’t think Carter would have been racking up the retweets in his day after he gave his speech on how Americans need to reduce their energy consumption or reap the consequences. In fact, he wasn’t reelected and remains a symbol of failure in the eyes of many. But, what most people don’t realize is that Carter passed more legislation that every other president in recent history with the exception of Johnson. That makes him officially influential, but wildly unpopular.
As we enter the midterm elections, President Barack Obama is viewed as a once popular president who never rose to his full potential of influence because he was blinded by his brand of peace maker. It remains to be seen if he will leave the office a popular influencer or something else.
I was at the Communintelligence conference on internal social networking today. My mouth hung open as I looked across the sea of open laptops and heard a cacophony of typing punctuating the voices of the presenters. I felt like I had landed on Planet Rude in the distant future where no one could focus on anything but themselves. What in the world were they all doing? Checking email…working on a presentation….surfing the internet. I had to peek over someone’s shoulder to find out. They were tweeting!
Exponentially Extending a Speaker’s Reach with Tweets
At first I felt sorry for the presenters. They must have been frustrated not to have everyone’s full attention, right? What I quickly realized was that people in the audience were tweeting quotes of the presenters to their followers. Why would the speakers complain? The audience was exponentially extending their reach with their tweets. In fact, after the keynote presenter was done talking, she started tweeting too!
I must admit I have mixed feelings about this trend of conference tweeting. I certainly understand why the organizer of the conference, @jgerst, would like to live tweet, but does everyone need to?
What do you think?
As a audience member I found it distracting, but as a public relations consultant, I see it as an opportunity for my clients to extract more value from their speaking engagements. Also, as an avid user of Twitter, I have been on the receiving end of tweets from other conferences, and I have found them to be very useful.
Tell me your opinion. Should conference attendees live tweet away?
Have you ever been robbed of a retweet on Twitter? I discovered this phenomenon after I began searching on strings of words from my tweets, in addition to my Twitter handle. I found numerous instances of people tweeting my content, but not mentioning my Twitter name. I didn’t think too much about it until a reporter, probably as an oversight, tweeted my client’s content without listing his Twitter name. In cases like this, tweets without the proper accreditation become a public relations measurement challenge.
Chris Curran, the CTO of Diamond Management & Technology Consultants, is a dream client. He has fully committed to Twitter. He tweets frequently, he shares his blogs, retweets the tweets of reporters and peers and engages in conversation with other high profile executives. In fact, he recently created a list of CIOs who tweet at his impressive blog, CIO Dashboard. The list has generated interest from inside and outside of Twitter, including from a prominent technology reporter. After I emailed it to him, he tweeted it and let me know immediately. I was grateful for his effort, but I must admit that I was disappointed that he didn’t include my client’s Twitter name in his tweet.
To help remedy the loss, I sent the reporter a tweet, instead of an email, that thanked him for tweeting the list and included my client’s Twitter name in my response. As a result, I encouraged the reporter to begin following my client and took another opportunity to tweet the list.
Have you ever been robbed of a retweet? Does retweet robbery bother you?
As a public relations consultant, I am an information addict. I used to spend hours watching CNN as I emailed my clients and reporters, obsessing over every story and digging deeper into the issues online in outlets like BusinessWeek and USA Today. But it struck me today that I haven’t watched CNN in months and I barely have email to check anymore. I am so enthralled with using Twitter as my information gathering and connecting resource that the days of CNN, even email, are a distant memory.
In my day-to-day routine, I have replaced broadcast anchors with much smarter print reporters with their own Twitter broadcasting networks. Instead of feeling completely disconnected and disenchanted with the TV, I interact with editors and reporters via Twitter like John A. Byrne, the Editor-in-Chief for BusinessWeek.com and Del Jones, the leadership reporter for USA Today.
Not only do I have access to the stories that they tweet, but I converse with them about the content and help them grow a following by retweeting their tweets. Rather than emailing them, I use DMs to let them know what’s going on in their areas of interest and to cultivate a friendship.
What about you? What tools are you finding falling away now that you have Twitter in your life?
Yesterday two earthquakes shook Twitter. The first was the realization that we all knew before anyone else that there had been an earthquake in California. Instantly, tweeps in San Jose and San Francisco tweeted, “Earthquake!” As always, breaking news alerts lagged behind.
The second happening that rocked Twitter’s world, or at least the PR professionals and reporters who use it, was the official launch of a new media database of reporters who have Twitter accounts. The list was created by @prsarahevans, @skydiver, @melissahourigan, @edunigan.
Yesterday the list comprised almost 500 reporters. Today, it’s almost 700. Given the explosive growth, it was only a matter of time before someone raised concerns over PR people using the list to abuse reporters. But instead of a reporter introducing the point, it was a fellow PR professional, @kamichat.
In my opinion, Twitter is a golden opportunity for a fresh start between PR and reporters. For the first time, I feel I can really show reporters that I am not one of those PR people who call them over and over again to ask if they received my fax, but I am the kind of professional who will retweet their tweets. I am not the person who will pitch them something completely off topic, but I will send them tweets related to their beat. I won’t call them, but I’ll DM them.
For anyone who is considering using the new Twitter media database to spam reporters, I say remember that Twitter is self-policing. Reporters can always block you. My goal is that they follow me because they consider me to be a useful resource.
I’m of the Top Gun generation. I know what it means to be a good Wingman. Whether it’s flying a plane or landing your buddy a date, most people understand what it means to be a reliable Wingman.
If you really want to be helpful to reporters and cultivate relationships with the most connected tweeters, retweet their tweets! If you really want to be helpful to your clients, retweets their tweets! If you want to build your follow list, retweet everyone’s tweets!
Be a good Wingman and you’ll soar to the height of Twitter popularity.
Twitter has one rule that I find frustrating, but completely necessary. Once you are following 2000 other Twitterers, it forces the number of Twitterers who are following you to catch up. When you do achieve an equal balance of following versus followers, you must maintain a 1:1 ratio as you ascend in visibility. As such, I am constantly fine-tuning my follow list to maximize my Twitter time, which I believe increases the quality of my experience, so I don’t mind too much.
When I am itching to follow a new find, I make a beeline to the generic brands for rapid unfollowing action. Having a brand not backed by one person sending tweets is like sending a robot to a cocktail party. I do not hesitate to unfollow a logo.
I have seen media outlets take three different approaches to the logo issue. Many send generic news blasts. Boring. The Chicago Tribune created a Twitter character, Coloneltribune, interesting. I find Businessweek.com’s approach to be most effective.
Rather than having a generic account, John Byrne (@johnabyrne), the Editor-in-Chief for Businessweek.com, serves as the source and advocate for the outlet’s hottest news. He is out there mixing with the people and promoting his work as he should be. To top it off, he encourages all his reporters to serve as Wingmen, retweeting his tweets, as they should be.
I feel like setting up a generic Twitter account is like dragging dirt from the past into our brand new house of communications where we are all on equal footing.
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