@SMEXbeirut asked recently if we’d written an article on why Spot On PR uses Twitter and what we get out of it, so now is probably as good a time as any. Those that have been following our social media efforts will know that we embraced Twitter almost as soon as it was unblocked in the UAE mid-2008. We already knew that Twitter could be a great connector of people and that it was another key piece of the social media puzzle. One and a half years on, and even with Twitter’s growth flat-lining (see Mashable story from 11 January), we still believe it offers great value to communicators.

As a communications, PR and marketing agency Spot On is committed to Twitter for 5 key reasons.

1. Twitter helps MENA’s web community join up the dots.

The Middle East and North Africa is becoming increasingly web-friendly with online ventures, web developers, application developers, bloggers and social media power-users growing in numbers across the region. However, despite the Internet’s ability to make location irrelevant, a great deal of talent and knowledge is local and focused on national opportunities and knowledge sharing and collaboration across borders has lagged a bit. Twitter allows web-friendly people across the region stay in touch daily and brings them closer together. Using Twitter, Spot On is able to swap notes and follow the news from these audiences across the region, on a daily basis and at no charge.

2. Content producers, aggregators and distributors love Twitter.

In last year’s Spot On MENA Twitter Demographics & User Habits Survey we found that 65% of those surveyed were bloggers. Furthermore, nearly 80% of those surveyed interacted frequently with bloggers via Twitter. The Middle East and North Africa Twitter community remains a relatively small one, but it’s an influencial crowd and this is because many of those using Twitter in the region are involved in the creation, distribution or sharing of content as bloggers, social-media power users, journalists or communications professionals (some 35% of those in our survey worked in public relations, media or marketing). Twitter helps us keep up-to-date with new blog posts, breaking media stories and content recommendations.

3. Twitter provides a useful media relations tool.

Spot On follows more than 150 journalists from across the Middle East and North Africa and has added them to its private Twitter Lists in order to have the ability to browse all their tweets in one screen. Like most PR agencies, we deal with hundreds of journalists and we simply don’t have the time to talk to many of them as often as we would like and listen to what’s on their minds. Twitter helps us keep up-to-date with journalists news and latest stories. We also quite often receive client-related enquiries from journalists via Twitter.

4. Twitter helps you discover the unexpected.
Twitter is great discovery tool. It can introduce you to new information, news stories and people every day. However, we often find that people we wouldn’t normally think of, or deal with very much, share some of our interests and we have rather more to talk about than we expected. Discovering unexpected interests and synergies is a huge Twitter benefit and its helped us strike up conversations with some very interesting people and organisations. It’s also, of course, introduced us to new blogs, bloggers, journalists, communications and marketing professionals and other interesting Tweeple.

5. Twitter can be a window allowing others to see more of your company.

I suppose that business development is what pays for our time to do all the other good stuff on Twitter and other social media. Twitter gives us another platform to share information on Spot On, what we’re doing, what we’re thinking and what we’re interested in, which is a great way for potential clients to get to know us a bit better before getting in direct contact. It’s like opening a little window that lets people see more of what’s inside the company and tune in a little bit better to what we’re thinking. It’s also a useful platform to promote our blog and other social media activities. Twitter has introduced us to a number of new clients and new potential clients, that we probably wouldn’t be talking to if we weren’t on Twitter.

If you’re not already following us, you can follow Spot On Public Relations on Twitter here: @spotonpr