Lance Armstrong and a tweeted Social Media Press Release

Lance Armstrong has decided not to go on fighting the anti-doping charges. Instead he used his blog as a social media press release site and then used Twitter as a distribution channel for that press release to amazing effect.

When you go to the link it says this:

Lance Armstong’s Statement of August 23, 2012

AUSTIN, Texas – August 23rd, 2012 – There comes a point in every man’s life when he has to say, “Enough is enough.” For me, that time is now. I have been dealing with claims that I cheated and had an unfair advantage in winning my seven Tours since 1999. Over the past three years, I have been subjected to a two-year federal criminal investigation followed by Travis Tygart’s unconstitutional witch hunt. The toll this has taken on my family, and my work for our foundation and on me leads me to where I am today – finished with this nonsense. (read more)

See what I mean about a social media press release – online, accessible, TWEETABLE.

Social Media Circulation vs Exposure/Reach

Circulation is how many people subscribe to your news. Reach is how many people forwarded your news. In emails it’s how many subscribers vs how many forwarded emails. On Facebook it’s number of Likes vs number of shares. On Twitter it’s number of followers vs number of retweets. How many people joined you vs how many people are acting on your information. No point having 3.5 million followers if none of them retweet your stuff. Are they even seeing it?

Building your own influence means building your channel. Lance has over 3 and 1/2 million followers. HE IS the industry organisation. I mean, if you define an industry organisation as collecting members who are interested in a subject… he could absolutely take on the official bodies when it comes to public relations. I guess he is doing exactly that with his last tweet (see below).

I checked the impact of his 14,039 retweets. I think it was around another 4 million – see the report below. Anybody who says social media is NOT broadcast but only niche, needs to rethink the numbers. After all 7 or 8 million received that tweet in their news-stream. That’s broadcast by anyone’s book surely? If the document below is loading slowly try this link on Scribd. Don’t forget to click FULL SCREEN or it’s like trying to read a tiny YouTube clip 😛

Sure,  gain 3 or 4 million followers on Twitter – but make sure that you get 14 or 15 thousand retweets when you need them. Either wise you are collecting tumbleweed.  And remember – if you are NOT an influencer in the network you want to influence, someone who IS will get your message out for you. But at what cost?