Reputation Management Online

Twitter monetization began officially on April 13th 2010 and finally the Ad-free service is looking at promoted tweets and their resonance among tweeple to be the deciding factor in value. So this means according to Biz Stone on his blog,

Promoted Tweets will be clearly labeled as “promoted” when an advertiser is paying, but in every other respect they will first exist as regular Tweets and will be organically sent to the timelines of those who follow a brand. Promoted Tweets will also retain all the functionality of a regular Tweet including replying, Retweeting, and favoriting. Only one Promoted Tweet will be displayed on the search results page.

So deals have been made with Starbucks, Virgin America,  Sony Pictures, Red Bull etc and their tweets will soon be featured as promoted tweets.  Promoted Tweets end up right on top of a search pile so search for something like ‘coffee’ on twitter will take you to the promoted tweet by Starbucks right on top of the search result.

From what I see @Starbucks is certainly doing quite well with the resonance thing, with most promoted tweets being Re-tweeted by the hundreds. Mashable finds that Virgin America is capitalising on “Red hot Tweets” with their offers.

However its still only a day old and in a matter of time we could have a better picture as to how effective a Reputation Management Tool this can be in the future.

To tow the line of resonance of the promoted tweet and its effect on people… could Tiger Woods or Toyota actually use this as a feature for re-building reputation and PR?

Twitter has largely been based on the large amount of content that it has been highlighting through tweets. Content is clearly King for Twitter and for now promoted tweets only appear on top of searches of relevant searches and will remain there and not disappear into oblivion as new tweets come up.

So if Toyota were to go in for a promoted tweet offering free accessories for a Prius or even some useful information on the car call-back it can probably get more visibility being right on top of the search list. Interesting???

While copywriters and Twitter users conjure up the right phrases and set this new tool in motion, we here at Reputation Management For.com feel there could be something here for ORM.

Early days yet but Twitter’s got our attention for sure and this could very well be an avenue to explore for effective crisis management and PR that comes under the purview of Online Reputation Management.