How can businesses use Twitter’s brand pages?

Posted January 26th, 2012 / By Francis in Social, Twitter

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Facebook is not only the largest social network, it may also be the most influential. Just recently, we have seen both Google and StumbleUpon introduce business-friendly features that are obviously inspired by the social giant. The latest to follow the trend is Twitter, perhaps Facebook’s most serious rival in the social space. If you’re lost here, we’re talking about the new pages the microblogging service recently launched with its redesign.

You heard it correctly. Twitter has taken a cue from Facebook and decided to launch its very own brand pages. Pretty much like the familiar feature now offered on various other sites, this one is specially made to allow businesses to take their efforts beyond the limitations of the personal profile. This aspect of the recent update has generated a lot of excitement, so lets dive into how businesses can put the new Twitter brand pages to use.

Pick Your Tweet

One of the many great things about the new Twitter pages feature is how it allows you to showcase a tweet at the top of your profile. This is similar to company’s Promoted Tweets advertising product that gives you the ability to showcase your sponsored posts at the top of the search results. Whatever tweet you choose will be seen by all users who visit your page. You have a lot to work with here as posts could contain images, videos, and other content that can be extremely useful in engaging and drawing them to your page.

Divide and Conquer

Another cool feature that comes with Twitter pages is the ability to conveniently separate @replies, which in the world of Twitter, refers to tweets directed at your business, and @mentions, posts that mention your brand using the @username. This particular feature should really come in handy for the marketer that understands the importance of staying on top of their identity in the social space. By having the luxury to easily differentiate between the two, brands should be able to respond faster and carry out their Twitter communications in general with streamlined efficiency.

Establish Your Brand Identity

Perhaps the best part to like about the new Twitter pages is how it gives you so much freedom in terms of customization. For instance, brands can insert a custom header that stretches across the top of their page. We have already seen some interesting examples of how this real estate can be used effectively by some of the early testers. From the looks of it, Twitter is providing brands with a great deal of power by allowing them to control the look and feel of their page. This freedom is a perfect complement to the business looking to establish their brand’s identity.

Right now, the newly introduced Twitter brand pages are being tested with a small group of launch partners. Notable names on the list include American Express, Coca Cola, and Dell. The rest of us – we will have to wait until some time in 2012, hopefully in the first quarter.

Francis Santos is a best practices activist and an advocate for free email marketing and html email. Francis can also be contacted via Twitter.