In this episode of the Speak PR Podcast, host Jim James—an entrepreneur with 25+ years of agency experience—examines the strategic role of Twitter for public relations and marketing. He opens by reflecting on Warren Buffett’s warning that a reputation takes 20 years to build and five minutes to ruin, linking it to recent fact‑checking of former President Donald Trump’s tweets. James reviews Twitter’s user statistics, discovery and purchase intent metrics, and debates whether the platform remains essential for entrepreneurs. He contrasts Twitter’s fast‑moving, short‑form messenger nature with longer‑form blog influence and with China’s WeChat ecosystem, highlighting how Twitter can serve as a community hub, flash‑sale channel, and customer‑service touchpoint. The episode delves into Twitter’s algorithmic shift (2017 relevance‑based feed, 2020 updates) and the resulting need for high‑frequency, engaging content—especially short videos and entertaining posts—supported by Sprout Social data on likes, shares, and response‑time expectations. James discusses automation tools like Hootsuite to manage the content flood, and presents data on influencer impact, noting that peer recommendations outweigh celebrity endorsements. He ties these insights to the Stockdale Paradox, urging leaders to maintain realistic optimism and integrity while communicating directly via Twitter. The episode concludes with practical advice: use targeted ads, funnel traffic to longer‑form content, maintain rapid response times, and leverage Twitter’s free, mobile‑native reach for younger demographics, while managing the platform carefully to protect brand reputation.
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Hello, welcome to this episode of the Speak PR Podcast. My name is Jim James, and I am your host. I have been an entrepreneur and a person running their own agency for over 25 years. And on this show, I like to share some tips and some thoughts about PR and technology. And the convergence of communication and commerce. These are ways that I think I can try and help my fellow entrepreneurs to make the most out of what they know and what they do and to get noticed. So I was thinking today about the Warren Buffett comment that it takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. And that's probably something that maybe even President Trump is starting to wrestle with now. News that Twitter have started to fact-check his stories and his posts on Twitter. This is a first because up until now he's been able to tweet with impunity, and whether or not you agree with his political leanings and intentions, he has used the First Amendment in America in a way that politicians in other parts of the world certainly would not be able to do. So Twitter now have started to fact-check because they're saying that some of his allegations about voter fraud and the attempts by Democratic Party to, to challenge the, the rule of law on, on, um, on voting is, is frankly not true. Now Twitter has some 300 million, um, users on a daily basis, and it's been the channel for Trump to go directly to his base and circumnavigate traditional media. The question is, is that something that, you know, you as an entrepreneur, or we as entrepreneurs, should do? Now, it seems as though Twitter plays a certain kind of role for consumers, but possibly not as influential as even Twitter may think. On the Twitter website, they say that it— Twitter is the number one platform for discovery, and 79% of people on Twitter like to discover what's new, that 53% on Twitter are more likely to be the first to buy new products, and that 26%, um, of people's time is spent viewing ads than on other leading platforms. So plainly, Twitter and business Twitter is a platform where you can connect with what's happening, and in the case of Donald Trump, you can connect with maybe what's not happening. Is it still a platform that we should be using? Well, they have Twitter feed which you can brand yourself. You can use hashtags and you can use your own URLs and you can create shortened URLs. But what people are really interested in, of course, is that you can start to interest-based target your niche audience through the targeting tools that Twitter has got. So it is another tool that can be used by by entrepreneurs, which is free, of course, to start with. And you can build a community using Twitter, and you can run, obviously, your own followers, and you can create your own hashtags if you want to cut across different accounts and to have different people follow. For example, we were talking about the Reach for the Razor campaign just the other day. But the difficulty with Twitter, of course, is the volume of content that flows through Twitter is so fast and so great. And some research done in America found that people in America, especially men, were, were not using Twitter to find out what to buy. So it seems as though Twitter is being used for sort of discovery, you know, what's on and what's trending, and really very much a— almost like a ticker tape for headlines, but is not an essential part of a brand building tool. Consumers, uh, in America, according to this survey done some time, about 2 years ago, with some 16,000 consumers showed that actually men were more influenced by blog reviews than women. And that 1 in 5 men would say that blog reviews influenced their in-store purchases. So actually, it's the long-form article by a potentially trusted author, which is getting people to the store and to make the purchases. The question is, how do people get to that in-store and to that blog? And the answer then is quite possibly on social media, and that is the role then that Twitter can play. So Twitter really is very much a messenger, and as Trump has used it, it's very much a messenger of good or bad and possibly factual or unsubstantiated stories. Now, Twitter is used not by that many people in terms of actually checking for products about what they're going to buy, but what it does seem is that Twitter is a medium for people to chat with a brand. So Twitter, to some degree, then can play a sales promotion and after-sales function for brands. And so what we'll see is on Twitter is consumer brands doing flash sales to their followers. And I've been looking and hearing about during lockdown, people are placing their orders using Twitter. So instead of having a website with an online chat to the website, than people are using Twitter. And this sort of reminds me of what's happening in China with WeChat, which also has a messenger and sort of stream of information flowing, but also is used indeed for chatting between one-to-one or to groups, making purchases with in-app purchasing stores, and customer support. And because Twitter and WeChat are so mobile native, they really play to the fact that a large section of the, of the consumer paradigm now is on mobile. So it, it— Twitter is appealing to the younger demographic. Nearly 60% of their demographic are under 35. So we are looking at Twitter for a certain role, for a certain consumer, and therefore it can be very powerful, especially as it's free. The downside, of course, is that it needs management because— and I find for myself— Twitter moves so quickly that you have to keep a constant flood of content going on there. Now, that raises this issue that we keep coming up against, and that's one of automation. Hootsuite is one software that will enable you to add your Hootsuite, your Twitter, and your Instagram, and your Vimeo, and your YouTube feeds all directly, and you post from one publishing platform. Now, the other interesting thing about Twitter is this theory that I've been talking about and written about on our blog under this Why Captain Tom created a viral sensation is that the Twitter users were saying that just 3% of them are influenced by celebrity endorsements. So only, only 3%, according to a survey by Collective Bias. Now, apparently the same survey showed that 30% of consumers are likely to buy a product recommended by a non-celebrity blogger or Twitter. In other words, consumers trust other consumers more than they do celebrities. Now, this is a theme that I've been coming back to time and time again, uh, and this article by, uh, Watts and Dodds, uh, that says that it's more important to create a story that resonates with other people who are easily influenced than it is to reach out to one or two influencers and hope that they will do the work for you. And this Twitter shows very much that that's the case. Now, for our own companies, what is great then is if we can reach out to our customers and to our staff and to our consumers and engage them to start to play a role on Twitter to support us and to do that by sharing pictures and news. And of course, the real point about Twitter is it's dynamic, so it's great for short-term and short-form information that we can share that has an immediacy to it. For example, like a flash sale. Or an opening time, trying to get rid of reduced inventory. But it does take some management. What you can do, of course, is use the targeted advertising that Twitter have got, but it must, of course, then come back to a longer-form piece of content that's ideally placed on your website and leading into a funnel.
Now, I just want to look a little bit more at the technology behind Twitter. And the good people at Sprout Social, and also the people on the Twitter website itself, talk about the new algorithm for Twitter that was launched in 2017, which essentially changed Twitter from being about the latest posts to being the post that they believe will be most relevant for you. So there's a fundamental change in the way that Twitter provides and displays your information, and you can toggle this little star at the top of your screen. Which gives you the opportunity to go to either the, uh, the, the time-based chronology or to tweets that they think will be most interesting for you. Their algorithm is now starting to send you information which has the highest engagement levels, and engagement is a function of other people either reposting or liking or as being an example of content that you have expressed an interest in before. So Twitter has become much more again like Facebook, where it's sending you content that you might like. Now, as a brand owner, what does that mean? It means that we need to be starting to send content out through Twitter on a more frequent basis. The people at Sprout Social have a tool set and some metrics where they are saying that you should be sending basically with high frequency during the day because your continued presence on Twitter will increase the likelihood of your tweets being shared and engaged. They're looking at different timelines and they're suggesting that first thing in the morning and throughout the period of the day is key. So all the way through the working day, people will be receiving and looking at tweets. They're also suggesting that the content that you send in terms of the format is key, that the content that includes short videos is the content that goes most viral most quickly, whereas plain text really doesn't go anywhere. They're also saying that social posts that encourage consumers that are posts that entertain get some 67% of all likes and some 55% of shares. Interestingly enough, posts that inspire, 57% will be liked, and posts that teach, only 46%, and posts that tell a story, 38%, and discounts and sales, only 37% will actually like that, but 38% will share that. So what we're seeing is this idea that Twitter is sort of almost just a constant stream. So if you've got constant entertaining content for your brand that's referring to something relevant for your audience, then Twitter could well be the platform for you to use. Finally, in Sprout Social, they talk about response times. And people's expectation on Twitter is that they will get a response in less than 4 hours, but most brands apparently respond in closer to 8. So many brands, many companies are not managing the expectation within the consumers and those people looking at Twitter. So if you're going to have Twitter, be prepared for the volume of content, the nature of the content and the expectation that you're creating of having a dialogue with those audiences. So Twitter's to be used, but it's also to be managed very, very carefully in order to get any kind of effect. And that's all down to the algorithms since 2017 and the new updates in 2020 that have made chronology less important than relevance and engagement.
In China, people use the QR code for their WeChat and also for their Weibo as a calling card on all of their material. That doesn't really happen very much with Twitter in Europe and the States, but what we are seeing is, of course, that people are using Twitter as kind of a random messaging platform. Now, Trump, of course, is proving that he can be perhaps more random in his messaging than most. But as leaders, we have to think maybe back to this other great concept of the Stockdale Paradox, which is after one of the highest— the highest-ranking American officer, James Stockdale, who was caught in the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War. And it's brought out by Jim Collins, who had met and spoke with James Stockdale at length. And the paradox was that Stockdale said, well, the people that survived understood and had absolute faith that they would survive from day to day and would eventually see through the situation as it is today. But they were not optimists, they were realists. They were able to confront the challenges of what's going on, but they believed in their long-term ability to get through this trouble. Now, as we have with the coronavirus, all of us don't really know when this problem is going to end, and we can use tools like Twitter to communicate how we're feeling, but we must also obviously manage the narrative. And as I keep saying about narrative being compassionate, optimistic, values-based, informative, and digital, Twitter represents an alternative for people to communicate directly through to their audiences without going via the media. That means it's direct and impactful, but it also has a slight risk to it. And as we're seeing in the case of Donald Trump, his own integrity now is being undermined because a third party has started to censor him in a way that it doesn't censor anybody else. So as a leader, credibility is of paramount importance, and that's what Admiral James Stockdale had done in the Hanoi Hilton, was to lead with great integrity. And as leaders during this time, that's what we must all do too, and we must use the tool sets of PR To communicate our own integrity, and to reassure our customers and our staff and our partners that we're all going to get through this together. So thank you for listening. If you've got a Twitter account, please follow us on @EastWestPR, and I look forward to hearing any feedback or thoughts that you've got about how you and your company using Twitter. And in the meantime. I wish you to be safe. I wish your business to be profitable, and I pray that you keep communicating. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.
