If you’ve been incorporating social media into your marketing for awhile, you already know that nothing stays the same for long. Twitter especially seems to always be rolling out new features, and even some of their existing features remain a mystery to many marketers. With that in mind, here are three things you may not have noticed about Twitter that you could be taking advantage of.
The “Retweet with Comment” Feature
Up until earlier this year, when including a comment with someone else’s tweet, you could only comment in whatever character space the original tweeter left. Meaning that if the original tweet was 120 characters, responders only had 20 characters to attempt to insert their own commentary. Now, this new feature allows people to share and comment on tweets without having to shorten the original tweet. Its context and meaning is preserved.
This is great for marketers who hope to engage with their community while sharing the context of their engagement, which gives potential new followers a greater understanding of the way a brand interacts with fans. It also means that marketers who hope to have their content engaged with don’t need to focus on crushing their tweets into even shorter character limits to leave room for hypothetical commentary by followers. You can use your full 140 characters, and followers still have the capacity to lend their two cents. Keep that in mind when you’re building out your editorial calendar.
The Removal of 140 Character Limit for Direct Messages
When dealing with customer support issues that arose on Twitter, many brands have been frustrated with the 140 character limits in direct messages. But that hurdle is a thing of the past! Now if a customer has a problem—or a potential customer has questions that might lead them to become a customer—you have nothing inhibiting that conversation. Of course, you can still take it offline—studies show that 40% of unresolved complaints through social media resulted in phone calls—but without character limits, even converting social media inquiries into a phone call is much easier. Throw a call tracking number into the direct message exchange and you’re now generating leads from social media in a more personal way than form fills.
New Twitter Ad Features
With the explosion of mobile, Twitter is constantly looking for ways to maximize their mobile ad offerings. Managing Twitter ads on the go is now as easy as anything else you do on your smartphone, and Twitter now offers a way to target your audience by personas, as well as by what apps they have downloaded. As you build paid campaigns on Twitter into your marketing mix, these tricks are great to keep in mind—they give you a lot of flexibility and insight.