Why Twitter needs to wake up and start working with businesses
There has been no shortage of articles claiming that Google+ will outperform Facebook and Twitter by next year and while I take these articles with a pinch of salt, as there’s a big difference between early uptake in users and long-term value, Twitter is independently risking leaving themselves behind. They have been making a lot of headlines recently with important changes to the site, the team and their work with advertisers. But are they making the right decisions, or is it a case of too little too late? Right now of course, Twitter is still going strong, but the longer-term implications of changes to the site and the company remain to be seen, and the future isn’t necessarily all that bright.
Not getting on well with businesses
Twitter have been much slower than most to work alongside businesses. Facebook’s willingness to accommodate brands, though it may not have been how Zuckerberg originally saw the site, is the main reason they continue to go from strength to strength. They recognised the need to monetise the site early on and found unique ways to accommodate businesses in addition to advertising through Pages and groups. This gave Facebook a completely unique advantage over other social networks as brands had a ‘safe’ space where they were permitted to set up a presence and interact with consumers. Twitter has yet to really accommodate brands on the site, other than through advertising.
While some may see this as detrimental to the overall user experience on Twitter, the fact is that if they are to continue to grow and sustain themselves as a business, they need to become more attractive to businesses. Advertising alone won’t do it, as most brands want to offset social media advertising with more organic activity and a place to build a long-term community. The nature of advertising on Twitter is that it’s very much around being one quick hit. A lot of advertising doesn’t lead to a Twitter profile but rather promotes an external site, which makes it more akin to banner advertising than social advertising. This isn’t what brands want anymore and though Twitter has recently made changes to their advertising offering, the social aspect still isn’t strong enough, which will put a lot of companies off.
Threat from Foursquare?
Other social networks are showing their willingness to work with brands and Foursquare is the latest social network to formalise this. They have recently introduced self-serve business pages. While businesses had branded pages on Foursquare before, these weren’t self-serve and were developed entirely by the Foursquare business development team (read – they probably charged a hefty sum for these). By adapting their business page offering, they will attract more brands to the site who will be attracted by advertising to grow their followers and reach of their communications through the social network. This is exactly what brands want through social media, which Twitter isn’t able to accommodate. While a brand can set up a profile just like anyone else, these are not distinguished as brands, with unique functionality such as the ability to contact the brand privately without the need to be followed back. While Foursquare’s offering for businesses isn’t going to directly compete with Twitter, when brands are looking to developing social media, offerings like this will always get a look in and it shows their understanding of what businesses want.
Getting advertising wrong
What’s perhaps most concerning for Twitter’s work with brands is that their single offering for this – advertising- is still a long way off. This was shown last week when the Discovery Channel brought a promoted trend on the site for #sharkweek . While this saw them appearing in the trending topics in the right hand side, the only problem was that they found themselves next to a distasteful hashtag for #reasonstobeatyourgirlfriend , which found its way into the promoted trends organically. While it might be bad enough to have your brand term appearing next to this, it was taken further when many people were tweeting to combine the 2, such as “She won’t shut up during #sharkweek!!! #Reasonstobeatyourgirlfriend.” For an advertiser in social media, this is enough to put you off for a long while, if not completely, as the brand damage is considerable. Of course, that’s a risk that you take when you open up your brand on social media, but Twitter needs to do more to protect their advertisers here, if they want repeat business.
The fact is that Twitter only has so long to really get brands on board if they want to seriously monetise the site. Of course, this doesn’t have to be the intention of every social network, but the fact that they are building out their ad products shows that they want to work with brands. If they don’t develop this offering soon, they risk getting left behind.
