When words create a thousand pictures
PR’s changed. A hell of a lot.
My first day in the job saw me sending a stream of press releases through the fax machine; stuffing the remainder into envelopes for the last post.
I’m still writing releases but the distribution couldn’t be more different. I also run a number of social media accounts on behalf of clients – communicating with journalists and wider audiences. I use Twitter to generate media coverage for businesses, as well as develop their brand awareness and engage with online communities.
To help monitor the effectiveness of this, I’ve developed a way of visually representing the type of followers (people and business) my clients attract on Twitter. If you’re in Frome and have a copy of the The List‘s March issue, you’ll see an example of this on the opening page.
A new addition to The List – a word cloud showing what people and businesses in Frome people have been tweeting about
The word cloud shows which words have featured the most in tweets posted by Frome folk over the past month – a fun and fascinating exercise!
Applied to Avalanche PR clients, word clouds provide a number of uses; the depiction of Twitter follower characteristics being a particularly useful one. Here’s an example applied to @bathbusiness (The Bath Business Club), of which I’m a member and soon to become its first lady chairperson don’t you know.
@bathbusiness now has over 1080 followers – as the above shows, very relevant ones.
The above image encapsulates the type of followers Bath Business Club is attracting on Twitter. The word cloud has been formed using words which appear most commonly within the profiles (the short paragraphs describing themselves) of the club’s followers. The stronger and larger the typeface, the more frequently the word appears.
These infographic word clouds represent just one way of monitoring social media effectiveness – and demonstrating how a targeted community can be developed online. They are quite beautiful in my view – and offer an easy-to-interpret visual for clients to understand the value of this marketing activity. Simple, yet revealing don’t you think?