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Journalists, Politicians, CEOs – Targeted monitoring on Twitter

You are currently viewing Journalists, Politicians, CEOs – Targeted monitoring on Twitter

U.S. President Donald Trump is a prime example: You can make Twitter your primary means of communication, and even use it as a political instrument. Should you, though? That is up for debate. Less doubtful, however, is that Twitter is becoming ever more popular among politicians as their communication platform of choice – as this recent (and remarkable) tweet from the Börsen-Zeitung goes to show:

TWITTER IS GAINING IN IMPORTANCE AS A COMMUNICATION AND DISTRIBUTION PLATFORM

Not just politicians, but more and more journalists are discovering Twitter as well – to raise their own profiles, to increase their reach or to follow others and observe topics as well as trends. One such prime example is “Welt” chief business editor, Holger Zschäpitz a.k.a. @schuldensuehner. He currently has 80,700 Twitter followers and regularly achieves extraordinarily high levels of engagement (i.e. comments, shares, likes) with his tweets.

Moreover, many CEOs have joined in, recognizing the platform’s importance as a potent means of communication. Tesla’s Elon Musk surely comes to mind, but Eric SchmidtSteve Forbes or Siemens Germany’s CEO,Joe Kaeser, are also among the rank of CEOs contributing regularly and prolifically to Twitter.

Twitter’s biggest advantage is twofold: More than others, the social network lives up to the concept of “information overload” and is quick and easy to use – both in producing and consuming content. In addition, Twitter has repeatedly proven to be an extremely fast medium for disseminating news.Twitter currently has 134 million active users every day.

In terms of social media monitoring, Twitter’s importance should not be underestimated as it still is – unlike Facebook, LinkedIn or XING – an open network where data can easily be processed and evaluated via API.

NUMEROUS ADVANTAGES THROUGH TARGETED MONITORING

Targeted monitoring of special influencer groups on Twitter such as politicians, journalists or CEOs provides multiple opportunities:

  • PR departments or press officers gain new insights into addressing the influencer groups in question, and, by closely observing tweets, can e.g. identify potential research foci or learn about political intentions. Moreover, observers can pick up on emerging reputational risks and counteract at an early stage.
  • What impact do journalists, politicians and CEOs have? Monitoring allows you to measure and quantitatively evaluate this KPI. Additional benchmarking may determine the impact even more profoundly. Similar rankings already exist, for example, for economists. As a result, you can draw conclusions about your own PR value and, speaking of “best practice”, thus ultimately improve your means of communication.
  • Through strategic observation of journalists, politicians, and key competitors (CxOs, managing directors, key developers etc.), companies gain insights into topics and trends they can use for themselves – for example in product development or marketing.
  • Targeted monitoring of how influencers react to tweets enables observers to be in step with the times, as it were, i.e. to (literally) read the general public opinion and use these insights for their own company.

HOW SHOULD INFLUENCER GROUP MONITORING BE SET UP IN PRACTICE?

Monitoring such special influencer groups, then, can only be effective if it is tool-supported –otherwise, the sheer number of tweets would simply be overwhelming (and furthermore depending on the breadth of the monitoring’s scope). Social media monitoring tools such as Talkwalker quantitatively assess and evaluate tweets, e.g. according to commitment and reach.

Experienced social media analysts provide additional value with focused observation as well as by evaluating and thematically classifying individual tweets – relevant content simply cannot always be determined on a purely quantitative basis. The trick here is to develop a knack for the essential. Creating impact and benefits (opportunities, ideas, risk identification etc.) for the client through monitoring essentially relies on both quantitative as well as qualitative elements.

Reporting concludes the list of key elements. Efficient reporting builds on a clear and precise structure. Results are clustered according to a catalogue of subjects; additional metrics offer further insights. Based on client preferences (and the way monitoring is integrated into everyday routine), reporting may ultimately happen via email, PPT/PDF or an online dashboard solution. If you would like a closer look at such a report, feel free to contact us.

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