Co-written by Keryn Brews and Catherine Scott

True to the ever-changing nature of social media, micro blogging giant, Twitter, has made some pretty nifty changes to its platform.

We took some time to explore them, highlight some of the new features and explain what the change means for businesses using Twitter as a marketing and communication channel.

Firstly, let’s look at what these changes mean for all users:

A Simplified interface

Twitter has simplified its interface to include five clearly marked tabs, which are the same across all the devices. #Consistencyrocks

Home

The ‘Home’ tab allows a user to view tweets from people and brands they follow. Photos, videos and conversations are now embedded directly into these tweets, making everything is immediately visible.

Connect

The ‘Connect’ tab allows users to, well, connect. In the old version this was the ‘Mentions’ tab.

Here you can see who has followed you, who has mentioned you in a tweet, and who has retweeted your tweet, or marked it as a favourite.

One of the new features of the platform is the fact that retweets and replies now include user’s full names, rather than just their twitter handles.

Discover

The ‘Discover’ tab works in much the same way as many social bookmarking sites, where content is delivered to you, based on your interests. It means personalised content, and what’s more, content served depending on your geographical location. Through this tab you can:

The ‘Discover’ tab is also where you can input hash-tags you’ve seen, and find out what conversation is taking place around them. 

This new tab could indicate a trend towards more targeted marketing and advertising for Twitter, in much the same way that Facebook gathers information about users likes and delivers, advertising based on their preferences.  It is an interesting space to watch, and certainly one that will allow users a more personalised experience, and brands a more targeted approach. #BigBrotherIsWatchingYou

Me

The new ‘Me’ tab takes you to a profile section that allows you to create a biography of yourself, and includes links to your lists of following, followers, favourites, etc.
This is also far more in line with profiles on social networking sites like Facebook, encouraging the sharing of more user information. Once again, could targeted advertising be on the horizon?

Tweet

Finally, the tweet button allows you to start the conversation by uploading your tweet, no matter which Twitter page you’re on.

More Value For Brands

In line with what seems like a growing monetisation trend on Twitter, the platform now offers specialised brand pages. This has certainly upped the value of a Twitter profile for brands.

Coca-Cola’s new brand page on Twitter

Previously, brand and personal Twitter profiles were created in exactly the same way, with the same functionality. But, as we know, brands and individual users don’t have the same objectives when they embrace the micro-blogging channel juggernaut that is Twitter.

Love At First Site…*Ahem*…Sight

Through the new brand pages, companies have far more control over what people see immediately. Brands can now stand out by creating more customised profiles.
Some of the features include:

The new twitter also includes the ability to embed tweets more effectively on other sites. The embed process automatically sets up web-intents allowing readers to retweet, reply, ‘favourite’, and follow directly from the tweet on the external website. This means thorough integration and great user interaction with your sites and blog posts.

For instance, a celebrity might tweet about your product. You could embed that tweet on your blog or website site and anyone reading it could reply straight from the tweet. Talk about user engagement!
It also means more in terms of documenting debates and keeping online conversation going. Now content is not simply syndicated from your website to your Twitter account, but vice versa.

What Does It Mean For Twitter As A CRM Channel?

Well, the ability to separate @replies from @mentions means that when a user looks at your tweets, they don’t have to see all of your CRM admin. This means great things in terms of online reputation management.

These new features certainly seem to be focused around drawing more brands to Twitter as a marketing and engagement platform. However, you still need to make the most of them to see the benefit.

Some Top tips for Brands on the New Twitter:

Remember, even though it appears easy to have a ‘set’ presence, this doesn’t mean you should put less time into your Twitter efforts. This is an opportunity to do more, not less.