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In a less than detailed announcement on its blog today, Twitter revealed the release of its new version of Twitter on Twitter.com and mobile devices, replete with brand new, simplified design, a new tab menu, and expandable tweets that show more information such as replies, retweets, and embedded photos and videos. (Okay, I guess they expanded on it a little bit here.)
Upon some even closer investigation, what Twitter fails to tout in its blog announcement is all the benefits the redesign has for business accounts on Twitter. According to Ad Age, Twitter is also releasing 'Brand Pages' for marketers, which offer brands on Twitter improved customization and business-oriented features. Let's explore what you have to look forward to!
4 Business Benefits of Twitter's Redesign
1. Large, Customizable Header Images: Brands can use these headers to display their logo and tagline more prominently than was previously possible in the standard Twitter format, where branded elements of a Twitter account's background design were often hidden by the timeline of tweets.
Marketing Takeaway: This means much better brand recognition for your business' Twitter account as well as a more prominent distinction between brand pages and personal pages. Yay!
2. Featured Tweet: Businesses can also elect to feature a particular tweet above their timeline. This featured tweet also auto-expands to show an embedded photo or video from Flickr, YouTube, or another source.
Marketing Takeaway: Marketers, this is a great way to highlight particular campaigns, promotions, or offers you're running that you'd like to attract more visibility to over a longer period of time. The shelf-life of a regular tweet is short, but with the use of these featured tweets, you can essentially expand the shelf-life of a promotion on Twitter. You can also support these tweets with engaging images and videos to better illustrate your offer and give your lead gen offers even more potency.
3. Separating @Replies From @Mentions: Brands will also now be able to easily differentiate between their @replies (tweets directed at the brand) and their @mentions (tweets just mentioning the brand with @username), as Brand Pages will separate these tweets into two buckets for account administrators.
Marketing Takeaway: This is great news for marketers who manage their business' Twitter presence via Twitter.com or their mobile device. Being able to easily distinguish between @mentions and @replies can help marketers streamline their responses and communication on Twitter.
4. Embeddable Tweets: Website owners will also be able to embed a tweet onto their website, giving site visitors the ability to favorite, reply to, or retweet a tweet without even leaving the web page.
Marketing Takeaway: There is so much marketing potential here! Better integration between Twitter and a business' website offers a great opportunity for marketers to merge these two worlds, expanding their reach on Twitter through on-site interaction.
For the time being, Twitter has only rolled out Brand Pages to a select number of partners and Twitter advertisers, so we'll have to wait patiently for our opportunity to customize our new pages. Twitter indicates it will be rolling out its new overall redesign over the next few weeks, so we may see embeddable tweets a little bit sooner than Brand Pages. If you'd like a peek at how the overall redesign will look in general, check out the following video:
Are you excited for Twitter Brand Pages? How do you think they'll impact your business' Twitter presence?
Image Credits: Ad Age, Twitter
