Welcome to TweepForce Blog

Tag Archives

3 Articles

Twitter recap for businesses, brands and digital marketers

by Tweepforce 0 Comments
Twitter recap for businesses, brands and digital marketers

Since Twitter launched its IPO, the company has been updating its products and services almost daily to speed up the monetisation. We have summarised all the recent launches for digital marketers inside or outside of companies, so that they can remain on top of this ever-evolving real-time social network.

1 Extended their advertising products outside USA

On 13 November, Twitter announced that small- and medium-sized businesses in the UK, Ireland and Canada will now be able to make use of its self-serve advertising platform.

Twitter’s suites of ad products include Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts, and Promoted Trends. 

Earlier, all businesses outside the US had to coordinate with Twitter in order to place their ads, which limited the social network’s reach. With this announcement, it is likely that more businesses will now sign on to place ads on the network, increasing its revenue streams.

2. Align advertising to TV Programs

Twitter announced the availability of TV ad targeting on Twitter. According to Twitter:

“TV ad targeting enables marketers to engage directly with people on Twitter who have been exposed to their ads on TV. Synchronized Twitter and TV ad campaigns make brand messages more engaging, interactive and measurable, while making it easy for marketers to run always-on Twitter campaigns that complement and amplify their TV creative.”

However, TV ad targeting for Promoted Tweets is available in a limited beta to selected partners running national TV commercials in the U.S.

 3. Custom Timeline on TweetDeck and Developer API

Twitter will let you build custom timelines based on topics, hashtags and more from TweetDeck. Twitter has also introduced an API to allow developers to build this functionality into their products.

This is an extension to their list service and will allow users to create powerful streams of information out of Twitter’s open data, effectively allowing anyone to create individual streams of data custom-made to a topic. The topics could be anything that’s comprised in a tweet, such as hashtags, a phrase like ‘going out’ or event-specific keywords like ‘X-Factor’ or ‘Tech Meetup’.

 4. DM option is removed and Block User is reinstated

Just a month after the public backlash following an abundance of spamming, Twitter has just removed its option for users to receive direct messages (DM) from any follower, whether or not that follower is being followed on Twitter. DMs can now only be sent to a user who is following you.

Under the short-lived change on Thursday, a blocked Twitter user could view or tweet at the person who blocked him or her, but that activity would have been rendered invisible to the victim, as if the offending account did not exist. Five hours later, Twitter canceled the change, and reverted the “block” feature to its original setting.

Takeaway for businesses

Clearly Twitter is still evolving, with many products coming to market and some being removed, but the gist is that Twitter, with real-time data, especially when people are watching TV or following live events, can be a formidable channel for marketers to promote their products and services. And with the introduction of their self-service advertising channel, it has become easier to promote things on this network. The marketer should also not forget that Twitter is still one of the most open networks and there are many tools, including TweepForce, out there to help them promote and transact on Twitter. 

Tweepforce Roundup(1st Oct): Tim Cook Tweets, Surge in @Mention & Promoted Trends

by Tweepforce 0 Comments
Tweepforce Roundup(1st Oct): Tim Cook Tweets, Surge in @Mention & Promoted Trends

Tweepforce continue to roundup Twitter stories and help businesses leverage this platform for businesses and product development.

Rouhani to Tim Cook on Twitter

Tim Cook (Apple CEO), contrary to his predecessor (Steve Jobs), has jumped on the Twitter bandwagon with several other noticeable tech CEOs including Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Dell CEO Michael Dell. Cook’s decision to join the social network demonstrates that Apple has recognised Twitter as a PR tool to reach out to both shareholders and customers.

Recounting his phone discussion with President Obama as “historic,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani took to Twitter on Friday with a series of captivating tweets that amazed and cheered many foreign policy observers.

Takeaway for Businesses

Twitter is becoming the first port of call for public relations for bigger brands and celebrities, and therefore businesses and industry analysts within organisations must keep an eye on Twitter for relevant stories so that they can help businesses shape their future strategies;

Twitter Stats Shows More @mention than Links and Hashtags

A recent study into Twitter usage habits, conducted by Carolin Gerlitz and Bernhard Rieder captured 4,376,230 tweets, sent from 3,370,796 accounts.

The main findings are:

  • Hashtags were used in just over 13% of tweets.Only 25.8% appeared more than once, and only 0.7% (1,684) more than 50 times.


  • Only 11% of all tweets enclosed URLs, which is less than half as many as stated by other studies. Social and content platforms are predictably the most popular links. E.g


  • For linking: YouTube ranks first, though Facebook would be number one if apps.facebook.com was included. The next three most commonly linked-to sites are Instagram, Ask.fm and Twitpic.


  • People like to have conversations on Twitter, as it seems that 57.2% of tweets contained an @username mention. Some 46.8% of tweets started with an @username.


    • Takeaway for Businesses

    More @mention i.e. engagements among Twitter users, means that now businesses must engage in conversations on Twitter and think beyond scheduling tweets with links to their content and hashtags. Brands could consider using the Tweepforce’s Twitter engagement feature, which enables customers to initiate a conversation on Twitter that can continue until commerce is done!

    Trending on Twitter Increases Brand Awareness

    Twitter analysed 35 randomly-selected Promoted Trends running in 2012 and 2013 and the study highlights three ways Promoted Trends drive business outcomes:

    1. increased brand advocacy;
    2. greater purchase consideration;
    3. Long-term impact on earned media.

    Takeaway for businesses:

    Perhaps buying promoted trends is too expensive for small and medium-sized businesses, but finding ways to trends on Twitter can be good for businesses in the long run. Have a look at our last week’s roundup, where we highlighted ways to trend on Twitter.

    Tweepforce Roundup (5Sep)-Twitter Stats, New Widgets & IPO News for Businesses

    by Tweepforce 0 Comments
    Tweepforce Roundup (5Sep)-Twitter Stats, New Widgets & IPO News for Businesses

    Once again we have summarised recent Twitter developments and their impact on businesses, brands and digital agencies that are helping their customers to make full benefit of the Twitter platform.

    1.Twitter continues to introduce new features and widgets:

    a. Twitter and The New York Times test a feature that lets people tweet highlighted text

    The New York Times recently tried a new Twitter feature in which users can tweet specific highlighted text within an article. Twitter also said in a blog post that the story chosen for the experiment, “The God of ‘SNL’ Will See You Now”, was tweeted 11 times more than the average of the top 500 shared NYT stories from last month.

    b. Twitter timeline flips to put emphasis on engagements

    Twitter just reversed the format of its timeline with a new conversation view. The full timeline will still display in the old-style ‘newest stuff at the top’ view, but now there are linked Twitter engagements which group tweets in a Facebook-like conversation format. At first glance this might seem like a simple enhancement that relates interconnected tweets together with a thin blue line and an elegant foldout box, but the aim is for this to make the timeline feel more human and less Twitter. The new feature is rolling out on Twitter.com, iPhone and Android apps and features an ‘old’ tweet first, with newer replies to it in order afterwards.

    Example of Twitter Thin Blue Line Engagement

    2. Twitter is gearing up for an IPO later this year or early next year!

    Not many people have any doubt that Silicon Valley based micro-blogging site Twitter is on the road to a public offering and the way things are progressing the company is on track to file for a public offering early next year in order to tap the markets in spring of 2014. But, according to pundits, in order to do that, the company needed to hit three major milestones:

    1. Over 400 million users

    2. About a billion dollars in revenues.

    3. Building a strong management team

    It would appear that by hiring the Google Ad Director and ex-MD of Live Nation, together with new statistics about the number of accounts, Twitter is on the way to achieving the first and third milestones. However, as per eMarketers, Twitter will hit about $580 million in revenues this year which is some way short of one billion dollars.

    3. Hashtag continues to be the epicentre of Twitter’s scheduling strategy

    Hashtags have become synonymous with Twitter and recently the company has revealed an infographic with a blog post highlighting tips to select the best hashtag for your tweet. The main rationales behind releasing this hashtag guideline are:

    a. To ensure the tweet is shared with the right group of users by finding the right hashtag for that group.

    b. To filter what can otherwise be a wide array of difficult-to-categorize information.

    c. To join any conversation on the platform by adding the appropriate hashtag to a tweet.

    In summary, Twitter has emphasised making your hashtag notable, fitting it in with other marketing activities such as ads or campaigns and not being afraid to attach it to a popular term or phrase.(Like below -:))

    Example of twitter hashtag engagement

    4. Usage of Twitter is aligned to smartphone growth

    The Pew Research Centre Study revealed the following:

    a. Some 15% of online adults use Twitter as of February 2012.

    b. 8% do so on a typical day.

    c. Overall Twitter usage has nearly doubled since November 2010.

    d. The percentage of online adults who use Twitter on a typical day has doubled since May 2011. e. The proportion of adults using Twitter on a typical day has quadrupled (now 8%) since late 2010 when it stood at 2%.

    According to the study, the two takeaway points to be considered in marketing campaign planning are:

    f. The growth of smartphone adoption is highly correlated to the growth of Twitter usage.

    g. The 400% growth in Twitter usage by 18-24 year olds.

    5. What are the takeaways for business?

    1. Share mobile friendly content on Twitter

    Twitter’s correlation to smartphones means businesses must make sure whatever content they are sharing on Twitter is mobile friendly and should be aligned to the right time, such as when people are travelling, watching live events or viewing favourite TV programs.

    2. Use hashtags to extend reach beyond your followers

    Don’t over-use hashtags but if you can find or create the right one don’t be afraid to use them as they take your conversation beyond the reach of your followers and help to create an identity on the social platform.

    3. Increase Twitter engagement for higher reach

    The new Twitter timeline with expandable conversation box means that businesses must try to engage with their audience as much as they can to get higher and highlighted impressions on the timeline and subsequently greater interest and conversion.

    4. IPO means Twitter, like Facebook, will become more advertising centric

    Twitter wants to go public and in order to do so it needs to grow really fast, both in terms of revenues and users. Businesses should not be very surprised, therefore, if Twitter rolls out many new features and widgets in the future; we will keep you updated on those advances and advise how businesses can drive more traffic and sales using new Twitter features.