Twitter Topics: How to Use It & What Marketers Need to Know

Twitter Topics makes it easier for Twitter users to sift through the roughly half billion tweets published daily and find content related to their interests. 

As a marketer, Twitter Topics can help you stay focused on audiences in your industry that fit your customer profile and join in on conversations that make the most sense for you to join. 

In this post, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about the platform's native feature, including: 

• What is Twitter Topics?
• How to Use Twitter Topics
• Four Ways Marketers Can Leverage Twitter Topics

What is Twitter Topics?

Twitter Topics is a Twitter setting that allows users to select and follow trends they're interested in from a list of Topics. When a user follows a Topic, more news and related tweets will show up in their regular Twitter timeline.

With Twitter Topics, you can follow topics as well as people that often tweet about relevant topics.

When Twitter launched the feature in 2019, it said Topics was meant to shift the platform towards conversation and away from one-off comments by influencers and celebrities: "Previously, all of the work was on you to figure out the best way to keep up with what’s happening by following certain accounts, searching for it, or looking in the Explore tab for the latest. Now, you have the option of seeing the most relevant and interesting Tweets about what you care about with a single tap, and the conversation will come to you."

Even though Topics was primarily meant to help individual users get the most out of their experience, it can also help brands build awareness and a following on the platform. For example, posting about topics relevant to your business can expose your tweets to people who follow those topics. 

As a marketer, you can leverage the tool in a few specific ways. But, first, we’ll go over the basics of using the feature.

How to Use Twitter Topics

Twitter often suggests Topics based on your account activity, and you’ll natively come across them in your Home timeline. You can click Follow to see related tweets if it suggests a topic of interest. 

The second way to access Twitter Topics is to navigate to your feed and click More, then Topics.

If you haven’t followed any topics before, you’ll see a welcome message explaining the feature. If you already follow Topics, they’ll appear here. 

If you click Follow some Topics, you’ll see a list of the most popular Twitter Topics, like “Entertainment,” with plus signs next to them that you can click to follow. 

Clicking on the plus sign will also display a drop-down menu of more niche but related topics. 

When you follow Topics, your Twitter feed will show posts algorithmically pulled in from your Topic preferences. To follow more Topics, you can simply return to the Topics page and click "Follow more topics."

Some tweets in your feed will sometimes offer a “See more about this Topic” pop-up, which includes a call to action to follow a related topic. 

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You can also search and follow a Topic using Twitter's search bar, as seen in the photo below:

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To unfollow Topics, return to the Topics page, click Follow more Topics, find the Topic you've followed, and click unfollow.

Four Ways Marketers Can Leverage Twitter Topics

As mentioned above, there are several ways for marketers to leverage Twitter Topics. We’ll discuss these below. 

1. To follow topics related to your industry to stay informed.

Following Topics related to your industry helps you stay on top of trends that are important to your customers and might impact your business. 

The more up-to-date you are on current events and conversations, the more you’ll know about your audience’s delights, habits, work-life, and pain points. And, having this information helps you keep your buyer personas up to date. 

In addition, when you know what your market competitors are talking about, you’ll get a glimpse into possible future innovations, trends, or challenges that you should look out for, helping you stay on top of industry trends instead of falling behind.

2. To discover and follow accounts or thought leaders in your industry.

Topics helps you discover thought leaders and brands that often discuss insights and ideas about your field. 

If you monitor the Topics you follow and notice similar accounts or people having conversations, it can well serve you to check out their profile to get a sense of the content they share. By doing this, you’ll also discover trends and insights in your industry, and their content may also teach you how to optimize your Tweets so you can get in on the conversation.

3. To create content or tweets related to trendy Topics in your industry.

If there’s a Topic that’s currently buzzy that strongly relates to your business, jump in on the conversation. 

If users of one of the Topics you follow are talking about a common pain point that your product or service solves, posting about that pain point can help you draw your audience's attention and educate them about how you can solve their needs.

4. To discover trending hashtags and optimize your own tweets with them.

Hashtags are one of the best ways to optimize your tweets and use popular keywords to gain visibility on the platform. 

You can leverage Twitter Topics to discover trending hashtags related to your brands' offerings and use them in your own tweets to generate brand awareness and position yourself as a source of authority.

Embracing Trendy Topics on Twitter

Twitter is a solid platform for topical and trend-based discussions. Topics will help you zone in on what people are talking about on the platform so you can join in on the conversation with relevant insight and conversation.