Twitter Launches Brand Pages

Twitter has announced that it will be launching brand pages as part of its site re-design.

      On December 9^th, Twitter announced a major re-design to its site with one of the main new components being Brand Pages.  Brand pages on Twitter are very similar to those on Facebook and are intended to give brands a greater and more controlled voice. The main features of Twitter Brand Pages are the following:

• Larger customised headers that place more emphasis on the brand’s logo and tagline
• Brands have control over which Promoted Tweets show up at the top of the page.
• Promoted Tweets will appear auto-expanded. This will allow users to instantly see photo or video content linked from the tweet.
• Brands can separate @replies and mentions in order to better manage the relationship with the users.

         Brand Pages currently launched with 21 brands and Twitter announced that this would be rolled out to more brands in the upcoming months. Brand Pages currently do not work on mobile phones yet this will be launched in upcoming months as well.

Twitter’s Re-Design

        Twitter has re-designed its platform in order to simplify the user experience and allow users to discover new content. The new platform has five tabs:

• Home: This remains like the regular Twitter feed where you can follow people that you have chosen to follow.
• @Connect: Through this tab, users will be notified about who mentioned/followed them, re-tweeted them or “favorited” one of their tweets. This tab will also suggest accounts that the user may be interested in following.
•  #Discover: This tab allows users to discover new content. It will show results related to the users’ interest, their location, what they are following, and current events.
• Me: This tab acts as the user profile. It allows others to Tweet directly to the user and it allows the user to feature the user’s interest.
• Tweet: This allows users to Tweet regardless of where they are on the site.
• This re-design has also included an updated to Twitter’s mobile apps.

     Advertisers can now have an increased presence in Twitter and manage their brand image to a more extensive degree.  Brand pages will allow brands to extend their conversation with consumers. Being able to control which sponsored posts show up at the top of the timeline will enable brands to highlight specific content they want users to be aware of and interact with. Being able to split up @replies and mentions will be especially relevant for brands with high consumer engagement. By splitting them up, this impedes the conversation with users from getting diluted and customer’s inquiries to be answered effectively. Twitter’s redesign overall will have an impact for advertisers as new brands and promotions can be discovered through the #Discover tab. 

        Launching brand pages is part of Twitter’s attempt to increase engagement with advertisers. This follows the launch of Twitter’s self-serve advertising which allows advertisers to set up campaigns directly without having to contact a Twitter representative. Starcom recommends brands to set up brand pages as soon as they are rolled out in Australia. This will enable the brands to publish content geared towards its Twitter users and stir the conversation using Top Sponsored Posts. Starcom also recommends that brands take advantage of posting engaging multimedia content within their brand page in order to create a buzz.  Overall, the #Discover tab opens a new opportunity for brands to create more awareness. Brands should follow trending hash tags and create content related to these in order to increase consumer engagement.