Att twittra sig till framgång : En kvalitativ studie om tre PR-byråers strategiska kommunikationsarbete med det sociala mediet twitter

This essay focus on the social media Twitter and how three Swedish PR practitioners view and use communication strategies for this social media. Twitter was created 2006 and is kind of a new channel in the digital world. The micro blog has over these few years attracted 175 million users across the world. In Sweden there is 91 000 registered users and according to a survey, 11 000 of them are active by tweeting once a day. Twitter is highly current and all kinds of people are using the social media, for example, artists, companies and individuals. Twitter is with its highly number of users building a new market for organizations to find their stakeholders. The organizations are given the great opportunity to have a conversation directly with their stakeholders in a global world. But as in all kinds of scenarios there are social codes. There is important to learn how to handle this given opportunity so that it won’t be wasted, and maybe even go that far to perish the organization. This essay therefore aims at exploring what kinds of communication strategies these three PR-practitioners use for Twitter and how they think that organizations can apply the strategies in their daily work with communication strategies. The essay also aims to explore what kind of problems organizations can meet in there relation with Twitter. The essay have been based on qualitative interviews with Swedish PR-practitioners with expertise on social media marketing. The result from the interviews in combination with relevant literature makes the foundation for the conclusions made in the essay. The literature and articles used in the essay is a mix of general PR theories, PR 2.0, Twitter, Branding and Social Media Marketing. The conclusion of this essay is that the three PR-practitioners are working with strategies for Twitter but Twitter is an integrated part of the strategy for social media as a whole. They always work from the organizations purpose and goal and the work should be based on the target groups, how can we reach them and what do they talk about on Twitter? The daily strategic communication work should be based on the target groups and how to adjust to them on Twitter. It should also be about working with the brand and learn from the stakeholders about your brand. Twitter can in the daily work also be used as a business intelligence tool for finding your target groups and learning more about them. The difficulties discussed by the informants is first the tonality, that the organization should both be personal and professional at the same time. Second that social media cannot be used as traditional marketing channels. Now it is about conversations and not one way communication. Third is how to build a relation with interesting and relevant content. And fourth, the availability. Because of the high-speed flow of information the organization need to be active and that starts question about response obligation and manning