What happens when you discover a hot-button issue regarding your client and you suddenly realize it’s spreading through the social media sphere like wildfire?

I have my usual resources that I use in social media crisis situations, namely digg.com and reddit.com—always my first “go-to” resources to get a sense of how a story is growing within the social media realm, especially when the issue in question starts spreading outside of the niche community where it began. However, this week, when dealing with a story in which viral activity was unprecedented to any issue I’ve ever seen with this client, I knew my usual resources would not be enough. I knew it had to be getting passed around on Twitter, and more importantly I needed to get a sense of how big and how fast that was happening.

The Twitter community is extremely adept at sharing links, sizzling stories and hot issues of the day. It’s often difficult to grasp how fast a story is spreading and the extent of the reach — especially when you’re racing against the clock and there are other things to assess besides just viral activity (sentiment, tone, themes of discussion, etc.)

Typically, I monitor Twitter using Tweet Scan or Twitter Search with relevant keywords. Both of these tools will show you recent tweets about whatever it is you happen to be looking for. They’re both great tools, but not necessarily valuable in every situation. When looking for tweets on that one specific story that happens to be the PR “fire” of the day you’ve got to think beyond relevant keywords. For example, a tweet such as:

“OMG, this story is a MUST READ. What a terrible organization. [link to story]”

Notice anything? Tweets like this might not mention your client, or the actual story—but I have a sneaky feeling they happen more often then not. This probably won’t show up in a Tweet Scan because it’s missing the keywords you are probably looking for. However, it’s still important because all of this person’s followers are now within reach of clicking through to the bad story. So, what’s the answer? How do you supplement using Tweet Scan for crisis monitoring?

Twitt(url)y

Just might be the answer. In a nut-shell, “Twitturly is a service for tracking what URLs people are talking about as they talk about them on Twitter.” With this tool, you can see how many people tweeted a link to a story, whether it’s the original link, snurl, tiny url, etc. Even better, it has URL stats showing:

- Tweets in the past 24 hours
- Tweets in the past week
- Tweets in the past 30 days
- Total tweets
- Estimated reach (calculated by total number of followers for each twitter user that tweets the link)

For me, finding this tool was a bit like opening a birthday present—well, not quite, but the feeling was something like that. I had to investigate. It’s the perfect tool for certain situations, but it has a few kinks:

  • It only shows top 100 most popular URLs on Twitter in a 24 hour period. Meaning, if a story has little viral activity on Twitter, it’s not going to show up here. I still might want to see these stats on a story, popular or not. But…if your PR “fire” of the day shows up here, then you know it’s already spreading fast.
  • No search function: This is probably the biggest flaw. I can’t plug in a URL to see if it’s showing up here. However, that doesn’t mean you still can’t search for it. Plug in the URL + “twitturly” to your google search bar and one of two things will happen—
  1. No results, meaning the story isn’t on twitt(url)y yet
  2. One single page will show up with the twitt(url)y results.

I used it this week to follow viral activity of a story that was getting passed around left and right—one that made it’s was to the top story on digg.com and the front page of twitt(url)y. For once, I was actually able to grasp how a story was spreading via Twitter. A moment of calm in chaos.

Despite the few kinks, I’ll use it again. That is, at least until there’s something better. But for now, something is better than nothing.