I Heard It on Twitter First

Yesterday morning an MTA bus crashed into the side of Brookshire Hotel Suites in downtown Baltimore. This story quickly made it's way around Baltimore, and of course, I heard about it first on Twitter. (Even before Facebook.)

When I heard the story being repeated on the evening news last night, it dawned on me exactly how slow traditional news is compared to the lightning speed of word of mouth on the internet.  I'd already heard and seen a picture of the event at 8am yesterday morning thanks to @davetroy and his own snapped picture of the event.

Blogs, which break news quickly, almost in real-time, have long applied pressure to traditional media. Well, Twitter and Facebook actually do break news in real-time, often with accompanying on the street pictures. This isn't some amazing revelation, it just really sunk in last night while I half-listened to the evening news rehash a story considered ancient in social media terms.

The internet is an incredibly dynamic, constantly flowing stream of information. Increasingly this stream is the first place people turn for news, knowledge, advice or anything else. And people are becoming more dependent on the on-demand availability of information. As marketers, it's important that we engage by helping people in their search for information.  

By adding value to the stream, you engage and create prospects, customers and relationships. By interrupting the stream with irrelevant messages or delivering self-centric promotions, you alienate people.

And never forget the lightning speed of online word of mouth. As a marketer, it can either be a powerful ally or relentless foe.

One last note - in trying to find an actual newspaper story about the bus crash to link to for this post, I googled "bus crash brookshire suites." The 4th search result was the very tweet from Dave Troy mentioned above. It ranked higher than news stories by wbal, wjz and abc2news. Once again illustrating how much the search engines love social media.