Digigen & The TinMan

We should all now be aware that Twitter is enabling its users or the other 90% of the population who don’t use Twitter, to embed tweets into pages, sites, wherever. It occurred to me that perhaps Twitter should be doing the reverse and allowing its users to embed content into tweets.

The reason I believe this is important is that Twitter is a place of links away from its site, people use desktop clients to access it, they use mobile apps, most of which aren’t owned or managed by Twitter. Therefore, infact over time does Twitter become a non-entity, simple a technology that is used to communicate rather than a destination for conversation and content. Potentially, the route out of this is to make Twitter its own content platform where users can embed content – videos, images etc and then use 140 characters to describe what it is that is being seen.

Effectively, this would work like a traditional Facebook status update allowing users to embed the content relevant to their fans and followers, so that they can view it in-situ rather than having to click away. It seems a smart move to me. The idea was something I thought of a while ago, but seems to be supported by this chart from Dan Zarella, which shows that users don’t tend to share videos as much on Twitter as they do on Facebook.

I can’t work out who is making more waves at the moment, Twitter or Spotify. Nevertheless, I thought I would write about both today and with Twitter’s launch of their new embeddable tweets they are going to get a quick note here too.

Embeddable features have always been a useful addition to YouTube videos, enabling the dynamic spread of great videos across blogs or other websites. However, Twitter has always had the problem, or we have always had the problem with Twitter, that we need to copy and paste or screenshot a page, to get those valuable tweets which we want to talk about.

The problem seems now to be non-existent as Twitter launches their embeddable tweets feature which means you can now take any tweet (this should roll out quickly) and embed it into your post or site. This is great as it enables quick reference of tweets without any massive effort.

This is due to be rolled out in the very near future, hopefully tomorrow…see quote below:

“But the truth, of course, is that a pasted-in image of a tweet is a bit of a hack. We have a simple alternative to propose; it’s coming tomorrow.” From ReadWriteWeb via Mashable.

I didn’t actually find this news amazingly exciting or worthy of comment until I read the quote from Evan Williams on TechCrunch.

“Everyone else has solved that problem. We are probably not going to give people a choice. If they want to use a different shortener, they can use a different app.”

It seems in the last two weeks Twitter have gone on the offensive, through both their Ad platform, and now the fact they will only allow one URL shortener on their platform..their own.

I am more of a bit.ly fan than any of the other providers, but I wonder if there is a real difference between them all to most people? For me the notable difference between any of the providers is and what Twitter will need to provide better versions of:

1) Customisation. How customisable or personal can you make the link? I don’t use the feature alot but I know some of my compatriots insist on customising their links.

2) Data. How many people have clicked my link and the data beyond that is the most interesting to me. Will Twitter build a Google Analytics element to their links package? If so, it could certainly make it worth using.

See ya.

Look at Google trends or any social media blog and the topical discussion point is around the fact that Twitter have announced their new ad platform. The best description of this slightly strange mechanic I have heard to date has come from Mashable:

“Twitter’s new ad platform will begin by charging per thousand impressions, but will eventually switch to a model that the company calls “resonance.” Essentially, a sponsored tweet gains points based on factors such as retweets, favorites, impressions, and clicks. Combined, this resonance score will tell Twitter whether or not an advertisement is performing, which will affect its longevity and its price. “

Its quite an interesting way of optimising campaigns, ads that are retweeted are given a higher score, live longer and thus cost more. Therefore, as always its all about creating great copy…nothing new there then.

The big issue to me, is that Twitter users favour Twitter because of its ad-free environment. Infact, there is a certain sense of satisfaction that the only way Twitter has made money to date is by charging away from its main site. However, we are all realists and realised this day was dawning a while ago. The question for brands is then “how do we produce an ad which doesn’t alienate the population of Twitter?”.

Here are my Quick Tips for A Great Twitter Ad:

1) Use social media monitoring to understand how people are discussing your brand within Twitter and other social areas – forums, blogs, and message boards.Take the key terms from here to help your first drafts at your ads.

2) Create a “Twitter” tone of voice and point of view, characterised by the need to fit a short message into a short ad. Personally, I think this means radio and outdoor creatives are going to be the strongest creative minds for delivering this experience.

3) Don’t treat it like another digital banner/ad. The above clearly dictates that the first brands to enter this arena need to tread carefully. Why not reach out to your Twitter following and let them help plan the copy for you? There is nothing like consumer creation to get something retweeted.

4) Personalise the ad. Create 1,000s of different ads which fit within each user group or list that you use within Twitter. Therefore, pulling in relevant content into ad which will help the sell.

5) Optimise and Create in real-time. Don’t let an ad dwindle. If its not being retweeted immediately, then perhaps you need to tweak it.

One thing I can certainly see is the rise of Twitter Ad experts, those who claim to know the technology inside out. However, I see the above being a very simple way of creating a good purposeful creative for Twitter without too much drama.