Yes, Twitter Marketing Still Matters for Your Brand

While Twitter is one of the oldest social media networks around, that doesn’t mean you should put your Twitter marketing and audience engagement efforts out to pasture — not even close.

If news and market prognosticators are to be believed, Twitter is on its last legs. The sentiment is so popular that you may have said as much yourself — and we’re betting that you used the very platform you were condemning to spread the word of its demise. Given how so much of the skepticism over it is coming from people who still rely on Twitter marketing to spread their message, it’s clear that the microblogging site still offers quite a bit of value for its users. 

Why Having a Twitter Marketing Strategy Still Matters 

Real-Time Conversations

In its ability to foster and maintain online dialogues, Twitter marketing remains unmatched. As far as up-to-the-minute news dissemination goes, its intuitive infrastructure has created a stream-of-consciousness live feed as well as the simple aggregation of the latest trends. All this (and the fact that we all love hashtags) helps Twitter loom high above the competition. Even with all of Twitter’s constant tweaks and changes to capitalize on trends and news, Facebook and Instagram still lag far behind when it comes to digital communication.

And to be clear, the platform isn’t just useful for keeping track of memes and viral trends — Twitter serves an extremely important purpose in breaking news and keeping communities around the world updated as major events unfold.

A 2012 study from the Pew Research Center found that Twitter served as a “critical lifeline” to those affected by Hurricane Sandy. The network provided several news outlets a platform to publish stories after their servers went down due to the storm, and usage swelled to twice that of the two days prior to the storm. Another report suggested that Twitter’s effectiveness here made “social media a viable platform for preliminary rapid damage assessment in the chaotic time immediately after a disaster.”     

International Engagement 

Much of the media we consume can take on a very U.S.-centric bent, and Twitter separates itself when it comes to international engagement. Only 34% of tweets are in English, and a considerable majority of user activity takes place outside of the U.S. As of Q4 2015, Pew Research Center reports that 254 million of 309 million total active users were located in countries outside of Twitter’s home base in the U.S. — that’s 82.2% of the network.

When it comes to reaching a truly global audience, Twitter clearly serves an important purpose. While language might serve as a barrier in some instances, the nature of trending topics and the international news cycle can bridge international borders like never before.

Sharing Content and Driving Engagement

Most importantly, Twitter serves a markedly different purpose than other social media networks. This becomes abundantly clear when it’s compared to Instagram. The marketing potential of Instagram is generally limited to driving individual post engagement within the platform’s proprietary, closed system.

That’s certainly not a negligible impact, but it doesn’t come close to Twitter’s ability to promote content and drive audience engagement to pages around the web. Twitter’s easily shareable social buttons have become integral to promoting any piece of content, as users understand that news and blog posts are more likely to pick up traction there than on any other platform.

And Instagram doesn’t even have the market cornered on visually-centric social media. Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than ones without them — and users trust images generated by other people over professionally produced photos.

To that end, news outlets and agencies that use Twitter (as they all still do, no matter what dire predictions come through the pipeline) as a means to engage their audience should be looking to source original, user-generated images for their tweets. By using Scopio, these organizations can find the images they need without ever leaving the platform. The service uses trends and keywords (and can do so across languages) to curate the types of images required, licenses the images from their authors, and publishes them for use.

With this model, Twitter doesn’t just still matter — it’s a stronger resource for news outlets and organizations than ever before.

Scopio is the industry’s premier search and licensing platform for images and videos on social media. We help brands, nonprofits, companies and media outlets and others find and use visuals that matter to their audience and build custom integrations. Want to learn more about Twitter marketing with UGC? Request a demo with the button below or email [email protected]. Let’s talk strategy!

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