twitter Tag

Why Every Marketer Should Pay Attention to Twitter Right Now

Twitter is making some series moves and every online marketer should take a moment to pay attention to what’s going on…

Prior to the last couple of weeks, it had been awhile since I could remember the last big Twitter update.  A lot of speculation recently is that Twitter’s CEO is in the hot seat and the company is under pressure to grow its number of active users.   It certainly seems that message has been received as Twitter has decided to make up for lost time with some big announcements.  Here’s a quick recap on what has been going on with this microblogging service giant and what I think it means for online marketers.

1. More Tweets Will Soon Show Up in Google Search
A deal has been signed between Twitter and Google to give the search engine giant (Google) access to Twitter’s firehose.  What this means is that Google will be able to tap into Twitter users’ feeds in real time and serve up relevant Tweets as part of its search results instead of just being limited to showing Twitter’s profile information.

Key Takeaway – I see this being huge for marketers especially when it comes to events and trending topics.  Being able to report relevant industry news first on your blog and having a Twitter strategy that goes along with it which is visibly in Google sounds like a great online marketing power play to me.

Need help with your Twitter strategy?  Contact me & we’ll talk tweets. 

2. Twitter Videos Are Live & So Is Group Direct Messaging
Toward the end of last year, I talked about the importance of video heading into 2015 and specifically discussed some of the things Facebook has been doing to encourage marketers to upload videos directly to the site vs. using a 3rd party like YouTube.  Well, Twitter has followed this trend with the roll out of its native video feature.  If you haven’t noticed already, when composing a Tweet, you will now see the capability to add a video.

The length of the videos is 30 seconds which is significantly longer than the 6 second Vine service which is tightly integrated with Twitter and twice the length of Instagram’s 15 second video limit.  30 second videos are a length that advertisers are very familiar with and I anticipate seeing commercial type videos coming from the big brands.

In addition to Twitter video, group direct messaging capabilities were also made a reality.  This means instead of being limited to a one-on-one DM conversation, others can now join the party.  It’s basically like a private little group chat…very similar to something you might see on Facebook messenger.  It’s also worth noting that not all of the Twitter users in the group message need to be following each other.  Hopefully this doesn’t get spammy, as I could see it being a very valuable way to make new connections via a personal Twitter introduction.

Key Takeaway – The key takeaway I see from this news is that brands will now have an even greater potential to re-purpose video content.  By shooting one video and making several different versions, it’s now possible to use that piece of content on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc.  This means far more people can be reached and in new ways.  A lot marketers are seeing greater engagement from videos posted directly to Facebook as opposed to the video being housed on YouTube and linked to from Facebook.  I imagine similar behavior may start to take place over time on Twitter feeds.

Final Thoughts
YouTube is huge and yes, it’s possible to build up a great following of subscribers there.  But as I look to the future of online marketing as it relates to video, I see a progression of marketers being more keen on promoting their Facebook channel and Twitter channel as more of these huge social media platforms make it possible to host videos on their sites. Video is going to become more essential than ever and brands will/are getting more creative about they way they do it.

Need help making a highly effective video?  Contact me to talk strategy today!