Live Tweeting – Yay or Nay?
Sarah Bakker joins Blackfoot after living in the UK and Sydney and is eager to use her international experience and learnings to create maximum benefit for Blackfoot’s clients. She was involved in the UK’s first live tweet of an operation for a private hospital client and discusses the experience with us.
Having seen live tweets conducted in the US, we were keen to have our client be the first to undertake one in the UK. Although Twitter isn’t always the most effective social platform for other sectors, it’s very useful within healthcare for thought leadership and positioning brands and personalities as voices of authority.
From an agency perspective, the best kind of client is a client who is open to new ways of doing things and this was a major enabler – our client trusted us and was willing to take a leap of faith. The next step was to find a willing surgeon, and then even more crucially; a patient. A man who was having a gastric bypass (to enable weight loss) agreed to be involved, providing he could remain anonymous. We were happy with this as we felt it didn’t affect the impact of the content, as it was about the procedure itself rather than the personal patient experience.
Once an operation date was decided, the focus was promotion. We designed a specialised Twitter banner for the client and they highlighted the event in their e-newsletter. They also erected a physical banner outside the hospital. Probably the most effective promotion though, was the PR coverage we gained prior, discussing it was taking place.
As this was a medical procedure, our major consideration was crisis management and planning how we would respond to our audience if something were to go wrong on the operating table. With this in mind, we ensured we had planned crisis responses. We also had to plan how we were to react if we were to receive negative engagement from our audience. However, the operation went smoothly and thankfully, none of the responses were utilised.
The client deemed the exercise successful as they felt it helped them to stand out above their competitors and position the hospital as cutting-edge. The live tweet did help the hospital gain followers, but the success mainly lay in the fact the activity was leveraged as a PR stunt, gaining exposure in both consumer and trade publications, radio coverage and also the interest of Sky News.
Here in New Zealand, we see live tweeting in many forms outside of the health sector. It’s very popular in the media – for example, the 2014 election results were live tweeted by New Zealand Herald’s editor-in-chief, Tim Murphy. For brands looking at conducting a live tweet, my advice is to only consider doing so if you are prepared to put the time into it. It needs to be well promoted prior and crisis management must be fully considered. You must also carefully think through the aims of the exercise and whether a live tweet is the best way to achieve these.
– Sarah Bakker, PR Manager