Twitter

Twitter is a social networking platform that was launched in July 2006 after it was created in March by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone. On November 6th, 2013, Twitter went public setting their IPO price at $26 a share.

Twitter started as a micro-blogging service where users could “tweet” out content limited to 140-characters and has remained the much the same since evolving into a huge social media platform. Now, there are over 230+ million monthly active users and over 500 million tweets sent out per day.

Twitter has features such as, tweeting, picture previews, link shortening, retweeting, favoriting, embedding tweets, following, mentions, and replies. Each contribute to the “conversation” and instantaneous content sharing environment. For marketers, Twitter represents an essential social media marketing source as it is a rapidly growing, fast-paced, and real-time environment. Marketers using Twitter for their brands have opportunities to use the analytics component of the platform to show them the most effective tweets they have from clicks, replies, and retweets. They also can look at general demographics based on their followers on top interests, location, and gender.

Twitter, like Facebook has an advertising component. The Twitter advertising platform allows advertisers and marketers to promote their tweets and accounts. An advertiser can target by similar users, keywords, or hashtags. The Twitter advertising platform allows for the advertiser to use a lead capturing form in their tweets, also called their lead cards, in their promoted tweets.

Why is Twitter Marketing important?

Twitter represents one of the major driving forces behind social media marketing. It’s a source that helps develop brand buzz, word of mouth, and engagement for a brand. Marketers can measure Twitter’s effectiveness through various things such as number of followers, replies, and mainly through retweets.