The Haymarket guide to Twitter

Twitter, the micro-blogging service that has recently played a part in both big news events and minor celebrity flurries, has been dividing the opinion of journalists.

Some, like Neil Durham, deputy editor of GP and Independent Nurse, champion Twitter’s potential. Others – Management Today editor Matthew Gwyther among them – see it as just another passing social media fad.

These are early days (Twitter began in 2006) and while it’s not yet clear whether it will be a lasting tool for media outlets, Haymarket journalists are using Twitter to source and tell stories in different ways, and to reach new audiences.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is an online service that allows anyone to post miniature blogs, or ‘tweets’, in just 140 characters. Its creators were inspired by status updates, on Facebook-style social media websites and online chat services such as Skype, that answer the question “What are you doing right now?”

Early adopters tended to use it to exchange updates with friends. That’s still happening, but Twitter is also fast becoming a tool for businesses and media outlets to transmit and source information.

Its ubiquity owes much to the the fact that users aren’t tied to Twitter.com – tweets can be sent and received using any of a host of applications, often created by third parties, online and from mobile phones.

Why do journalists use Twitter?

Professional and citizen journalists alike use Twitter to send quick-fire messages from (almost) anywhere, increasingly to break news from events such as the terror attacks in Mumbai late last year.

Haymarket journalists have also exploited the immediacy of Twitter by sending updates live from the Cannes Lions advertising festival (Campaign India), for instance, or the UKA Aviva Birmingham Grand Prix – a major Winter athletics competition (SPIKES).

Autocar editor Chas Hallett was at the Shanghai Motor Show when the new Rolls–Royce was revealed. “I got on Twitter within five seconds of hearing about it,” he said. “It’s an instant way of getting the information out there.” Autocar has also broken news stories based on tweets from trusted sources in the car industry.

“For Autocar, it’s one of the most useful social media,” says Hallett. He points to the close match between Autocar’s readership and Twitter users: “All the figures suggest a high percentage of people who use Twitter are over the age of 35 – way more than Facebook and Bebo”.

Twitter can also be a source of new readers, which in turn increase website traffic, as recent figures published by Brand Republic show. Digital marketing magazine Revolution – which interviewed Twitter founder Biz Stone in its latest issue – drew more than 10,000 people to a story through a link on Twitter, and prompted follow-ups from as far afield as Brazil and Korea.

David Hall, who edits the customer title SPIKES for UK Athletics (UKA) and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), says that although the magazine does not reach America, it is followed on Twitter by key figures in US athletics including sprinter Allyson Felix, who was recently appointed to US President Barack Obama’s sports council.

“Twitter lets us push links to an audience,” says William Maher, brand editor for PC Authority, “rather than relying on them coming to our site. It also lets us tell readers about stuff we’re doing that we don’t have room for in the magazine, or that doesn’t suit a story on the site.”

Journalists can also use Twitter to bring together the threads of a conversation for their audiences, even if the tweets come from different sources. Compliance Week created a tag for anyone twittering about its recent annual conference. A search for that tag – #CW2009 – returns a long list of tweets from many perspectives, not just Compliance Week’s. It bundles the subject up in “one nifty package” says Compliance Week editor-in-chief Matt Kelly, and also gives potential advertisers a sense that “the conference is big and it’s useful”.

Kelly also notes that business-to-business titles on Twitter can create a way for potential business partners to keep in touch with each other’s sectors. “There are a lot of people trying to gain some sort of traction with Compliance Week’s audience and they see my Twitter feed as an easy way to keep their finger on at least one of the pulses of what’s important to compliance officers.”

Who’s using Twitter at Haymarket?