When it comes to how you share press releases or articles, where do you turn for immediate distribution? For many, the answer now includes Twitter. Viewing Twitter as just a conversation space? A social media platform with a short consumption lifespan? You may want to re-think that.
A recent 6 month study done by University of Arizona Management Professor, Sudha Ram, analyzed how news agencies, focused on US news, global news, technology news, or financial news, used Twitter to share information. The study evaluated how they were tweeting the information, how often it was retweeted, and the duration of time that tweet sustained momentum. The study found that the BBC, who has multiple sub-accounts, has the most retweets and longevity of a tweet among the 12 agencies studied. The New York Times and Mashable came in second when it came to dissemination of their tweets.
The graphics to chart the findings, which looks more like artwork than a graph, shows just how these news organizations’ tweets diffuse over time. What’s interesting is that the data shows the BBC’s articles continue to be retweeted for up to three days. This is encouraging for brands who may feel that releasing news on Twitter only gives them a 24-hour window of opportunity for publicity. Typically, and as the report confirms, most tweets die out after 10-72 hours. However, a brand can continue to breathe life into a tweet well past 24 hours if choosing to tweet the article of importance more than once in a day, by selecting the most engaging language to drive retweets and social sharing, and using a tool like Hootsuite’s AutoSchedule to deliver those tweets at a time when it will have optimal impact with their followers.