'Twitter has suddenly exploded'

Peter Hay and Gemma O'Reilly, PR Week UK, 25 February 2009, 5:07pm

Tech agency Hotwire has emerged as the most active PR consultancy on social networking tool Twitter.

Research by Porter Novelli in conjunction with PRWeek reveals that 29 staff members (56 per cent) at Hotwire have an active Twitter account.

Porter Novelli and Consolidated Communications are the second biggest users, with 26 and 25 users respectively.

Meanwhile, Burson-Marsteller has just two consultants on Twitter, Fleishman-Hillard has one and top City agency Brunswick has none.

Porter Novelli global digital director Mat Morrison, who co-ordinated the research, said the influence of a Twitter user was difficult to evaluate. But he added: ‘A simple rule of thumb is how many people follow this person, and how often do
they tweet?’

With this in mind, Splendid Comms digital director Rax Lakhani wins in the popularity stakes, boasting the most followers, at 1,956. Other popular PROs include Lewis consultant Jon Silk, with 1,637 followers, and Cow MD Dirk Singer, with 1,407.

In terms of output, as PRWeek went to press, Hotwire senior programme executive Ben Matthews had tweeted 3,410 times in just 372 days.

Hotwire director Drew Benvie was an early adopter, having joined the site in January 2007. Benvie had sent 3,779 tweets in 780 days.

‘As a platform for use in public relations, Twitter is invaluable,’ said Benvie. ‘From networking, to story mining, to issues tracking and news seeding, the only limitation of systems such as Twitter is how far you’re willing to go with experimentation and breaking new ground.’ Other active users outside the tech sphere include Borkowski founder Mark Borkowski and Edelman president and CEO for Europe David Brain.

‘Twitter is about sharing views and exchanging ideas,’ said Borkowski. ‘It has suddenly exploded because people are curious about it, but they don’t understand it. My advice is to think about and truly understand how you use it. Fake Twitters don’t work.’

Brain warned clients: ‘If you are a consumer-facing brand, you need to be monitoring Twitter, because there are enough people on it now that it can affect your reputation.’

Based on research carried out by Porter Novelli

Prolific tweeters

Drew Benvie
Director, Hotwire PR

Joined 6 January 2007
Followers 1,912
Friends 347
Updates 3,779

Dirk Singer
Co-founder, Cow PR

Joined 28 April 2008
Followers 1,407
Friends 1,265
Updates 2,252

Mark Borkowski
Founder, Borkowski PR

Joined 18 September 2007
Followers 1,172
Friends 526
Updates 1,290

Twitter Stats

31 Number of months Twitter has been live

974% Increase in number of UK users in the past 12 months

2,289 Number of tweets by David Brain of Edelman in 708 days

56 Number of tweets by Colin Byrne of WS in 515 days

3,779 Highest number of updates –by Hotwire’s Drew Benvie

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All Comments

Jed Hallam - 26 February 2009

Great article and it's good to see Twitter getting some coverage. Just a quick note - Wolfstar has 90% of its staff on Twitter, nine of us in total!

Bruce McLachlan - 26 February 2009

How Twitter is used as a PR tool is surely more important than how many people use it? Can't help but think listing users is missing the point slightly.

Having said that, if you're updating the above table as a result of the flood of outraged agencies looking for corrections, please ignore the above and include Nelson Bostock (22 users) ;-)

EDWARD WELSH - 26 February 2009

Very interesting read. Mark Borkowski's advice is pertinent, and Drew Benvie's recommendations hit the mark. I'd like to know more about the benefits to PR consultancies and a similar analysis of the public sector. Here's why I'm using Twitter http://is.gd/jGhi

Phil Stubbs - 26 February 2009

Being new to Twitter, I am still struggling to be convinced that it's not a wholly egocentric vehicle for people who are under the false impression that they are communicating with the world. People like their views to be heard, but are other people really that interested in what you have to say in 140 characters? I hope that time will prove me wrong. Meanwhile, I am happy to boast that 100% of staff at Stubbs PR Limited are on Twitter!

Ian Green - 26 February 2009

80% of our staff tweet. But the league table is meaningless which ever way you cut it. Do you measure how tweetable an agency is by the number of staff who tweet? Or by your number of followers, or the numbers you follow? Or how often you tweet?

Surely it is about the quality of what you say on Twitter and how other people engage with your conversation.

The reality is that Twitter is nearly three years old and the media have only recently picked up on it because of Stepehn Fry, Jonathan Ross and the bloody evens of the Mumbai bombing.

I first started using it in December 2006 when I was introduced to it at Les Web3.0 in Paris.

At that time it seemed a bit of a novelty but its usefulness as a PR tool cannot be in doubt - particularly with the advent of the Twitpitch and the number of journalists and other commentators sourcing news on it.