Week 11 Part A: Marketing with Twitter, TikTok, Google for Business, LinkedIn, AI and more

Twitter:

Without any reasonable justification, I have always been reluctant to be part of Twitter. With so many other social media platforms already in use, I just did not join Twitter. With all the recent media coverage on its controversial acquisition by Elon Musk, I thought this exercise could be an opportunity to learn more about it. 

With 320M+ monthly active users, Twitter can be a powerful tool to raise awareness about any business, engage with customers and develop leads. Twitter is a place where users, and clients get to talk about a brand, also publicly, on their Twitter accounts. A Twitter presence is a great opportunity for brands to build solid relationships with their audience. Setting up a Twitter for Business profile is simple, but it needs to be used regularly to be most effective. 

In my research, I was initially surprised to know that the use of Hashtags, a practice that has now become very common to see on social networks like, Instagram and Facebook, has all started with Twitter. 

In theory, the purpose of Hashtags is to group same-topic conversations to help users find more content on topics that matter to them. Moreover, the easier they are to find, the more likely it is that people will engage with them. With Twitter, however, this is not necessarily right. According to a recent twitter engagement report, using hashtags does not appear to increase Twitter engagement. In fact, it turns out that the level of engagement goes down as the number of hashtags used goes up. Therefore, instead of using a ton of hashtags, the suggestion is to use relevant hashtags that the target audience is following. 

Another finding is on video, which is generally rated as one of the best formats to trigger engagement regardless of the social platform. Twitter, however, is not the best platform to post video content. There are technical limitations in terms of time duration, resolution and maximum frame rate per second (FPS) which can cause the video quality drop drastically. 

On the other hand, Twitter is an excellent platform to create GIFs - which are very short clips made of a series of images. GIFs are one of the best ways to grab the attention of one’s audience on social media nowadays: They are animated with movement. They are not as heavy as a video and they will load fast on mobile devices, even on a low signal. 

It seems that the ideal tweet length - those that generate the most engagement on the platform - is between 71 and 100 characters. If a link to the company’s website is included the ideal size is between 94 and 123 characters. 

Twitter is also seen as a vital marketing, customer care and market research tool that can provide valuable insights on every aspect of the business. The platform makes it easy for customers to reach out to brands and provide their feedback or ask for help. Brands can then use this as an opportunity to not only collect vital feedback to improve their products but also to deliver the support their customers need.