Twitter’s expansion of brand pages, extended to a beta group of UK brands this week, marks a step towards its plan to become more of a platform, according to experts.
This week, Twitter announced it had opened up its enhanced profile pages to UK brands including Asda (pictured), Sky, EA Sports and Cadbury. The Sun is also scheduled to join the beta trial and will be launching an Enhanced Profile page soon.
Following the launch, experts have said that, while the time spent on brand pages is negligible compared with time spent on the newsfeed, it is a marked improvement.
Joshua March, founder of social CRM firm Conversocial, said, “The vast majority of brand interactions just take place in the feed. However, this is only once someone is actually following a brand. The Enhanced Profiles won’t affect the vast majority of interactions, but will give more influence over new followers and the minority who visit the page itself.”
March said that statistics on Facebook show that 85% of all interactions happen in the newsfeed and 15% on pages, and while there aren’t stats for Twitter yet, the story will remain similar.
O2’s social media lead Alex Pearmain, said, “The main way people interact with, and discover, great Twitter accounts is via the newsfeed. Brand pages are nice-to-haves, rather than a killer feature. But the cherry on the cake, as well as the sponge, filling and icing, remains the same as it always has been: quality, engagement-led content.”
Asda, one of the first brands to be signed up to the trial in the UK, agreed, stating that while the improved creative helped to boost its brand messaging, maintaining a dialogue was its core use of Twitter.
Dominic Burch, head of corporate communications and social media at the supermarket, said, “We’ve included a strong call to action to gain followers in the background and created a banner to bring focus to our Price Guarantee, which is further supported by our pinned tweet. Our aim remains the same regardless though, which is to have an engaging dialogue with our customers via the social channels they chose to participate with us on.”
Another factor brands need to consider in this announcement is that it is part of a wider plan to turn Twitter into more of a platform, enhancing the range of tools available to both brands and users.
Simon Mansell, CEO of TBG Digital, who works with Asda, The Sun and KLM on beta trials of the pages, agreed that while the launch may not seem significant, brands need to invest now because Twitter has more planned for the future.
“The Enhanced Profiles on their own are not a big deal,” he said. “But we have had meetings with Twitter about the fact that it is aiming to become more of a platform, which will then include playing games or making purchases, for example. If brands don’t start to build on this now then they will miss out because they don’t have the audience there. This is the first step in a journey.”
Adam Field, global head of social media at gaming company Pokerstars said the company plans to leverage Twitter more in the future. “I am more excited about what it is going to do,” he said. “We don’t yet know the pace at which it will make these changes but this announcement has at least sent a clear message to marketers that it is developing with them in mind.”
