What is Twitter? Twitter is a social network that enables its users to send and receive short posts called "tweets" on a public platform. What differentiates Twitter from other social platforms is it's fast-paced world time nature, and it's very conversational due to the real-time dimension of users' timelines. Twitter also introduce hashtags into the social sphere which makes it very easy to discover new content. With short messages as its primary communication format, Twitter is the ideal platform to create and be a part of a conversation. Tweets can be replied through and users can engage with each other around a topic of interest because so many people are on the platform and share content every day about their passions, what's happening around them, and what's happening in the world is a vast source of information and entertainment. While everyone experiences Twitter differently, here are a few key areas of interests that people look for on Twitter. News and politics, people wants to find out the latest of local and global news, watch political events as they unfold and take part in communities and social movements. With sports from the Olympics to the NFL draft, you can get real-time updates, see what the star players have to say, and connect with fans around the world. In pop culture, you can find out what your favorite celebrities are up to by following them on Twitter and joining in on a conversation. For influencers, you can see what thought leaders and experts in your industry are saying and connect with creators, artists, and celebrities. Finally, Twitter provides a lot of utility, you can get commuter info and updates, receive disaster updates and support and reach customer service agents without even having to call. These are only a few categories of interests that make up the major conversations on Twitter but you can actually find a conversation for anything that interests you with so many people interests, brands can leverage those instantaneous conversations to understand and share content to their target audience even if their audience is niche. Why do people use Twitter? As we mentioned, Twitter is born in a live dimension which means people are on-the-go sharing and reading things in real-time as they're moving throughout their day, so what that also means is that people are using Twitter primarily on their mobile device and it's keeping up with the pulse of the world evolving as time goes with 280 character messages every second telling us what's going on around us. Twitter is the prime platform to stay up-to-date on news and current events, get news and deals from brands, discover new content such as videos, articles, accounts, etc. Engage live commentary around events like the Super Bowl, or the Oscars, or the World Cup, and give consumer feedback. A lot of people use Twitter for customer service so it's imperative that brands are paying attention in real-time to service those customers. Now let's think about what the benefits of Twitter are for digital marketers. You can first use the platform to discover what's happening around you. Brand's needs to stay up to date with world news, trends and customer interests. Twitter is a perfect place to see these things as they evolve and take note of how your brand fits within this evolving landscape. For example, if you're a retail brand and you're looking for inspiration or insight on what your customers love, Twitter a great place to find out what colors, fabrics, and celebrities that people are interested so you can target your tweets accordingly. Number 2, you can use Twitter to managed your brand's reputation. Twitter is a place where people will share all of their feelings, so it's a good place to keep track of what the sentiment is around your brand and manage any negative commentary before it spirals out of control. Twitter is also a great place to increase your brand's awareness. As mentioned, it's a great place for people to discover content, so people there are active and curious and want to know new things. Brands in this environment, as long as you're providing great content, it should be a great place to engage people with your brand and spike interests. As also mentioned, Twitter is a great place to provide timely customer service. People are on a go and experiencing your brand throughout their day to day and will use Twitter as a way to get immediate customer service so it's important as I mentioned, to be checking these tweets and comments on a regular basis so you can service them in real-time and prevent any negative backlash. Twitter is a great place to research your competition. You can easily find out what they're doing, what they're saying, how they're engaging customers and therefore find out how you can differentiate yourself and level up over the competition. Twitter is also a great place to connect with customers, brand advocates and influencers. These influencers tend to have really large audiences so if you win them over, you'll win their audiences over and it's a great way to humanize your brands and remain authentic. Even though Twitter is one of the leading social media platforms, there are some common misconceptions that persist. Let's go through why they're wrong. Some people think that followers are the only success metrics, that's definitely wrong, brands can achieve much more than just getting their maximum follower count. It's about community management, building relationships with your followers. Some brands might have a few followers but if they're very dedicated and engaged that means way more than if you have millions of followers and they don't care about what you're doing or not engaging with your brand. Another common misconception is that users only tweet. Actually users are coming to the platform to discover content, we keep saying that but it's worth reiterating. People are coming there to find out new things, to engage with things that interest them and then to tweet and share the content. Another misconception is that Twitter is only for business and tech people. That couldn't be more wrong as we talked through earlier, people there are interested in tons of different things. News and politics, pop culture, sports, live commentary on events, anything under the sun people can find on Twitter. Finally, the last misconception is that tweets are only text, that is not true. Actually, the best tweets that get their most engagement include photos, videos, gifs, you name it. If you really want to get people talking and engaging with your tweets be sure to include images and video. With Twitter, you can achieve mostly your marketing goals and objectives, including increasing video views and content engagement, driving traffic, sales, app installs and app re-engagement. Finding new customers, getting customer feedback and finding brand advocates, and developing customer service, increasing brand recognition, brand sympathy, and brand awareness. You can also use Twitter to even grow your CRM data. Before starting on Twitter, it's important to set your goals so each action whether it be a tweet, following someone or running an ad has a very clear direction.
