This summer has been a season of change for Twitter with a consistent rollout of updates to the platform and the available advertising functions. But which are most important for businesses?

Limitless DMs (Well 10,000 characters)

Social media customer services staff worldwide are surely rejoicing after the official scrapping of the 140 character limit for DMs! Never again will apologetic tweets to angry customers require multiple messages, carefully crafted to ensure sentences make sense within 140 characters. Break a sentence in the wrong place and risk further agitating an already disgruntled customer!

But it is not just disgruntled customers that this functionality can be used for. Allowing conversations to be taken away from the public eye can allow for a better and more in-depth conversation with customers and prospects, and has the potential to build relationships, truly engage the audience and at the same time demonstrate brand personality.

Let’s hope that marketers don’t use these extra characters for over inflated sales pitches that innundate Twitter uses with endless spam in their DM inbox.

Twitter ads have gone mobile!

With the ever-increasing trend of going mobile, Twitter ads have done just that with Twitter Ads Companion, allowing Twitter app users to manage ads on the go in real time allowing for more reactive ad management.

The tool provides information on an account level and for specific campaigns detailing; impressions, engagements, spend, cost per engagement and engagement rate. Ad Companion allows users to; monitor ads, adjust budgets and pause, resume or extend campaigns.

Available on both IOS and Android, the tool allows existing Twitter ads to be monitored and amended, but initial setup must still be completed via desktop. In the future I hope that the setup function will also be available on mobile, even if it’s a less detailed interface, to allow the functions currently available on desktop, such as copying and amending previous campaigns or promoting an individual tweet.

You can now target Twitter ads by events!

Worldwide or even national events have long been a go-to topic for marketers and Twitter has now taken the step to allow users to centre campaigns around specific events with Twitter ads.
Twitter adverts previously allowed businesses to target ads to match interests, demographics, competitors or TV programmes that your desired audience is talking about or are followers of, but this has been extended to more general events from sporting, musical or even national days such as Mother’s Day.

The tool has 3 main features; the event calendar to identify events, event insight to provide audience information for the particular event and event activation allowing advert targeting to be set up with one click.

The tool provides users with a searchable calendar to look for relevant upcoming events as well as event insights on audiences associated with events and the potential reach. There is historical information on the performance of previous events on Twitter allowing users to see how many tweets and impressions were generated previously, enabling campaigns around events to be specifically tailored for the audience.

This tool can be beneficial for a more agile marketing technique, however marketers should already be aware of events topical to their desired audience so it will simply only help target those who are not currently followers, but who are interested in the event rather than the brand or businesses. Therefore in terms of gaining valuable followers or long-term followers, it may not have the desired effect and people should avoid jumping on popular events that are not closely aligned to the business demographic. It may, of course, work in terms of engagement for the post but just because someone is interested in an event doesn’t mean they are necessarily interested in you business. Therefore this type of targeting would be better used to compliment other targeting methods that help to identify those who are more likely to be a more engaged and loyal follower for your business.

Audience insights

Insights into your audience, their likes and dislikes, their interests and even which TV programmes they watch, provide valuable information to marketers, helping to shape content and messaging that speaks directly to your desired audience. Twitter this summer introduced audience insights allowing you to look at details on those who have engaged with your organic tweets and with information available in the audience dashboard about user demographics, interests, and purchasing behaviour.
This information can be used to drive content, help you discover which subjects and mediums your audience is interested in and also help with targeting of Twitter ads.

With all of the Twitter ad updates this summer, Twitter is demonstrating the ever-increasing importance of accurate targeting and analysis for social advertisers. Although a clear ROI may not be able to be demonstrated with the most recent updates, Twitter ads are improving and providing more intelligent ways for social advertiser to refine their strategy for the best possible results.