While there may have been a little confusion surrounding which organization was really responsible for releasing last week’s Twitter earnings on Twitter, the tweets appeared in financial streams and across Twitter trading communities well before the market closed on Tuesday and soon, Twitter’s stock price was in a free fall.
Twitter earnings were disappointing. But the sell-off likely would not have occurred so quickly if the Twitter and Twitter financial communities hadn’t jumped on the tweet as formal news to get a head start on the selling process.
The Twitter earnings leak on Twitter is another example of how Twitter has become an important tool for breaking news and for monitoring who’s saying what when it comes to companies, industries, organizations, people and trends.
More and more I see an important story break first on Twitter, which can often lead to a massive amount of traditional media coverage. Extensive media coverage is usually always followed by another round of significant coverage on Twitter as news outlets tweet news and their followers retweet, favorite and share stories with their own followers and communities.
In today’s faced-paced and continuously evolving global communications environment, there can no longer be any doubt about how valuable Twitter is when it comes to helping organizations reach and interact with influencers and target audiences.
I became familiar with Twitter nearly a decade ago after completing an in-person enterprise security and digital identity management industry analyst tour in Europe with spokespersons from American Express, Intel, Oracle, Sun Microsystems and Nokia.
Shortly after the three-day tour ended, I began seeing “messages” tied to one of the analysts on the tour pop up in search engines and in several of the subscription services I was using to monitor client coverage in global markets. I later discovered that these messages were tweets.
Since then I have become an expert in leveraging Twitter to help organizations reach a variety of marketing goals, and have used my experience in implementing successful Twitter campaigns to train senior executives and PR teams on the benefits of incorporating Twitter into strategic proactive campaigns and programs.
My daily approach to Twitter on behalf of my clients is always based on a well-established and extremely flexible marketing plan, and usually focuses on answering the questions “What do I want to say on behalf of my clients today?” and “What audience do I want to target?”
Answering these questions has proven to provide the ammunition required for developing some extremely engaging tweets and the framework for creating and distributing a steady stream of fresh content.
As senior Twitter executives look at creative ways to address Twitter earnings challenges, I continue to rely on Twitter as one of my go-to platforms for delivering creative and far-reaching communications results to clients around the world. – Russ DeVeau