Twitter, a microblogging and social media site, is continuing to gain popularity thanks to its open design and dedicated followers. A recent survey from Compete.com found that Twitter is the third largest social media site in the country when measured by total page views, and although it only has about six million unique visitors, it garners approximately 54 million views per month.
Twitter is changing the traditional media landscape and the way people are documenting and learning about breaking news.
This is evident in the recent news about US Airways flight 1549. Within minutes of flight 1549 landing in New York’s Hudson River, dozens of New Yorkers started sending Twitter messages about the crash. According to the Telegraph, “Twitter users broke the news approximately 15 minutes before the mainstream media. However, it wasn’t just messages that were “telling the story.” Janis Krums, a Twitter user and iPhone owner, used his phone to take a picture of the downed plane and uploaded it to TwitPic. His picture was forwarded across the “Twitterverse” and was picked up by numerous blogs and news Websites.”
Scenarios such as this illustrate the power of social media and the ability to affect millions of people across the world with – literally – a push of a button.
When used properly, social mediums can be a great tool to break news, creatively market a company and reach a broad audience. However, it can also negatively impact companies that are unversed in this landscape, creating a powerful snowball effect that often reaches a broader audience than traditional news media.
An article published in the Financial Times is a great example of how social media can create this snowball effect. Last September, advertisers launched a campaign for the pain reliever Motrin. The advertisement “implied that while baby-carriers might be fashionable, hauling a child around could be painful.”
Mothers, angry with these advertisements, posted anti-Motrin campaigns on Facebook and blogs and also posted videos on YouTube to express their anger with the campaign’s suggestion that their babies were a hassle. They also used Twitter to attack the company and voice their disappointment with the advertisements. Motrin, unprepared to handle such a social media crisis, became unresponsive to the backlash and critics accused the company of being “not only insensitive but also unresponsive.”
Examples like this illustrate the importance of staying up to speed with emerging trends and technologies. As social mediums like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube continue to gain popularity, it will be important for companies to embrace these mediums and engage with their target audiences through these networks.
The best way to get acquainted with these tools is to experience them firsthand. Join the Twitter network or create a Facebook page to see what all the hype is about. As Jennifer and Colleen state in their upcoming book, Strategic Public Relations: 10 Principles to Harness the Power of PR, “Using these tools yourself will give you a much clearer picture of how they are used and by whom. It may also generate some innovative ideas for how to target these media on behalf of your organization.”