We’re taking our partnership with Twitter to the next level. Today we’re thrilled to announce our addition to the Twitter Certified Products Program. This collaboration ultimately benefits our customers, allowing us to continually deliver the most innovative tools and approaches to reach your social goals.
A badge of honor
Through the program, Twitter awarded Shoutlet with an engagement badge that showcases the capabilities of our social media management tool.
Even for those who don’t gaze at the stars regularly and wonder about the cosmos, the landing of the Mars rover Monday was captivating. For social media and community managers, there’s a good chance they were just as enamored with the way the NASA team handled the social media outreach surrounding the landing as the discoveries Curiosity might unearth in the coming years.
Successfully executing a spacecraft landing that’s being compared to the moon landing of 1969 is pretty stunning content that generates a ton of buzz. But lessons can be learned from NASA that bring an out-of-this-world edge to your everyday social media plans. What could your team accomplish if it applied these takeaways?
The past few months have been a waiting game for brands.
First, it was speculation over when Google+ brand pages would launch after the platform debuted in June. Then, in late September, Facebook announced Timeline, and speculation on how it might be adapted for brands heated up.
Now, Twitter’s solution for brands, Twitter Brand Pages, is on the scene. Unlike Google+ and Facebook, which did not disclose their brand page options simultaneously with those for its user bases, Twitter has. Twitter unveiled a shiny new interface for users Thursday, one that is meant to be more accessible to people still mystified by the Twitter phenomenon and hold the attention of seasoned tweeters.
Brand pages for Twitter will roll out over the next several weeks, but pilot brands have live Twitter Brand Pages currently, including American Express, McDonald’s, Dell, and JetBlue.
While all brands don’t have access yet, there are parts of the announcement that brands can utilize now, as well as steps to take now to prepare for the brand page launch. Consider these:
1. Drive conversations with new Twitter buttons: Twitter released redesigned follow and tweet buttons, but they’ve also introduced versions of these buttons that prompt users to jump in on a hashtag thread or launch a conversation with your account on Twitter. For Twitter promotions and ongoing branded discussions, the hashtag button is a great way to make tweeting seamless for users. The mention button is a great call to action that sends tweeters directly into a conversation with your brand.
For example, what do you think of the new buttons? Tell us on Twitter.
Tweet to @shoutlet
2. Find uses for embeddable tweets: The move toward integrating social media into company websites continues. Twitter’s easier embeddable tweets allows anyone to embed any user’s tweet onto third-party websites. The embed includes the original tweet, as well as a follow button and actions options, such as Reply, Retweet and Favorite. For brands, embeddable tweets allow visitors to your site interact with you right then and there. Before, there were the options of following and tweeting through Twitter buttons, but now, there’s content and context. Highlighting individual tweets is an excellent way to leverage the tweets of brand ambassadors, of expert consultants, and high-profile executives. For instance, apparel brands could embed a fashion expert’s tweet on a product page. A shopper can retweet, favorite, or reply to the expert’s tip about that item & how it’s part of a hot new fashion trend.
Twitter Resigns Around Four Concepts: Home Timeline, Connect, Discover, Me #LetsFly tcrn.ch/saeqsu by @eldon
— TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) December8, 2011
3. Begin thinking about how your Twitter mission and goals translate to the new features of the Brand Pages. Twitter Brand Pages will allow companies to have a custom banner image, larger profile picture, and a “pin tweet” that is always featured at the top of the tweet stream (see pilot brand examples below). What should your primary message be here? What are the creative elements? What are you trying to accomplish on Twitter and who are you trying to reach? If those differ from Facebook, Google+, and YouTube, how so? Answers to these questions will drive how your page looks and what will be your initial pin tweet, which many pilot brands have opted to promote a video or image, such as @SubwayFreshBuzz, @CocaCola, and @Jetblue.
Brand Pages won’t roll out to all companies right away. When brands are given full access to the new pages, it will be interesting to see how brands, given a heads up on the exact elements of the new pages beforehand, will use this new tool for reaching customers on Twitter.
For social media teams, time is at the heart of everything they do. Slow response times can mean the difference between a happy customer and an escalating situation. Timing posts to maximize interaction has become a hot topic, with several recent studies offering time-of-day tips for publishing. Editorial calendars for social media plan out time-sensitive posts about company-wide events and promotions are maintained. And as always, trying to keep up with the real-time nature of social media is a constant challenge.
Scheduling tools and social media management platforms have become much-needed resources for taking pressure off teams. Scheduling tweets, Facebook updates, and other posts in advance makes sure content reaches audiences at the optimal times and that audiences in multiple time zones don’t miss out on updates. Creating and pre-scheduling updates also frees up time to respond to customers and have one-on-one conversations on social platforms, writes Melissa Parrish in her new report, “Become Responsive through Push and Pull Social Media Marketing Strategies.” It’s among the key tactics to help improve overall responsiveness in social media.
Time-saving strategies that help social media practitioners do their jobs better are inherently good. But there are nuances to this process that can make the difference between saving time or reaching more customers and detracting from the connections you’re working to create. (more…)
I’ve been waiting for Twitter to acquire TweetDeck – or another tool for managing the distribution of content to Twitter and other networks.
Twitter has 200+ million users. It’s the only platform I’ve ever seen that is managed at such a high level outside of its own tools (non-official apps). According to this article, a sampling of 25 million tweets indicated that 42% came from a non-official app. Of course, this could be thrown off when 2.2% of Twitter users account for 60% of all activity.
This isn’t all bad though. After all, look at how well Facebook did with their “openness” over time. Take a look at the super comprehensive list of tools that are built around Twitter. Anytime companies are building their companies off of your company, it’s a good thing.
My guess is there are two main (and somewhat connected) reasons for the acquisition: 1) market share of tweets from non-Twitter tools, and 2) defense.
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