5 reasons why Twitter is so valuable to digital PR

By Emma Robinson

In the world of digital PR, everyone uses Twitter. It’s breadth and reactivity can be incredibly useful in an industry which relies on always having its ‘finger on the pulse’.

Here are the five key reasons I find it so valuable, and how you can use it in your digital PR activity, too:

1. Media monitoring:

There are a lot of different methods for tracking coverage and to make sure you’re seeing the full picture, you should use all of them – from simple Google searches, using tools such as Ahrefs and BuzzSumo, to Twitter!

Twitter is a fantastic additional tool to use to help track coverage, whether that be for your own campaign activity or for organic features.

By searching for your brand regularly on Twitter, following relevant hashtags, and regularly checking brand @ notifications; you can often spot coverage quickly, and sometimes that will be coverage that may not be pulling through into the main media monitoring tools.

Many publications of all tiers will share articles to their social media accounts, which not only is a great way for you to quickly spot coverage but can also act as an additional metric when considering the success of a campaign.

When an article has been shared to Twitter it will reach a bigger circulation of readers and proves that the idea is shareable within itself – all great things for your brand.

It can also cause a snowball effect because the more a piece is shared on social, the more people (and journalists) will see it, and the more likely you are to gain even more fantastic coverage.

2. Reactive PR

Twitter is one of the best places for reactive PR as many journalists post their requests using #journorequests and #PRrequests – sometimes even posting to Twitter before sending the requests via media request databases or forgoing the databases altogether.

This is so useful as you can jump on requests before the majority of other PRs have seen it, increasing your chances of a being successful over competitors for the commentary.

So, not only is Twitter a quick and easy way of finding reactive opportunities, but it can also be more streamlined than other methods as you can also search for specific, relevant keywords in the search bar alongside the #journorequest.

When working on reactive PR, timing is everything. It’s hugely important that whatever you’re going to provide to the journalists, you can do so quickly – otherwise you might miss the boat.

As well as reacting to timely requests for reactive PR, Twitter is also a fantastic indicator for what is currently trending in different countries. Trends and emerging topics will often be discussed on social media before they make it to mainstream news outlets and publications, so if you spot something relevant to your brand trending on Twitter it’s already time to quickly jump on it for a reactive campaign.

3. Ideation

There are so many potential sources for ideation nowadays, but Twitter is a severely underrated resource.

You can track trends, recurring conversations, and anything else you can think of that might help shape your campaign ideas – and its utility for lifestyle, fashion, or pop culture campaign ideation cannot be overstated.

You will also find so many great PR accounts that you can follow for inspiration – whether that be digital PR’s and agencies who share their tips and tricks for successful campaigns, or there are also thousands of digital PR campaign accounts such as Digital PR examples, Digital PR Tips, Just Digital PR and The PR Bible to name just a few.

4. Relevance

Twitter is also a great way to quickly scroll and see what a specific journalist commonly covers to help streamline your outreach approach.

Journalist databases are obviously a great way to get an overview of a specific journalist and their field, but, as an example, “lifestyle journalist” is a very broad description and could cover a range of topics from TikTok trends to cooking – so how can we make sure that what we’re approaching them with is of huge relevance and interest to them?

Journalists receive hundreds of emails a day, and don’t want to be bombarded with irrelevant pitches or releases, so will ignore them – this will be both a waste of your time and theirs, which could just end up frustrating them and getting your name blacklisted.

Going so far as to follow relevant journalists on Twitter is a great way to see when they announce a change of role or publication, thus keeping you and your media lists as up to date as possible.

When you follow them, you will also be able to see exactly what they are writing about in real time as they push out their stories and requests on the app every day.

5. Networking

Finally, Twitter is the best resource to connect with other digital PRs from across the world.

Following, liking, retweeting or replying are great ways to network with fellow digital PRs and journalists and start a conversation.

Building relationships in this industry is extremely important for success as you never know where you might find a new opportunity for your brand or a campaign.

So, what are you waiting for – start using Twitter to add real value to your digital PR approach, and get in touch if you’d like any more support with your campaigns.