@BruceDaisely, the UK Twitter Director advises on Twitter marketing approaches

With over 1o million users in the UK, that's 16% of the UK population, and in excess of 140 million worldwide: Twitter is a household name. There's an appetite to use it on mobile too, with 80% accessing it on their mobile.

I was interested to hear Twitter UK Director @BruceDaisely showcase it's successes and value to companies during his presentation at Teradata Connect2013:

'Marketing in the moment' is where Twitter excels according to Daisely; communications must combine relevance, interest and intent'

He gave examples of popular UK brands on Twitter, including some surprises. Automatic Doors have over 203,000 Followers as they are currently the fastest growing brand profile in the UK, according to Socialbakers.com with Nandos ranking top in the number of Followers at over 950,000.

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No time to Tweet is an excuse, but make sure you have a plan

Do you suffer from 'tweeters block'? Do you find yourself trawling through dozens of websites trying to find something relevant to say to your audience? If the answer to either question is 'yes', it’s time you put together a content plan! Even if content is not a problem, the quality of your feed and consistency of your message will be so much better if you plan ahead. Your Twitter feed may look like a series of updates, but to your audience it’s telling a story about you and your business. They can read your tips, view your articles and see what you’re up to. They can see who you’re talking to and eavesdrop on your discussions. If a potential client sees your Twitter feed, they need to have a…

Twitter moves to a more Google-like intent-based keyword targeting

Value/Importance: [rating=4] Recommended link: Twitter blog announcement Twitter has offered interest-based advertising for some time, but we’re notifying this is a big deal since from today it offers targeting based on intent shown by keywords in a similar way to Google AdWords. The way this works is that when someone tweets and it contains a targeted keyword, a promoted tweet can be delivered as this example of a request for a coffee coupon shows! BrandRepublic reports that several companies looking to drive awareness and transactions have used the approach including Everything Everywhere (@EE), MicrosoftJapan(@SurfaceJP), Walgreens (@Walgreens) and GoPro (@GoPro). For GoPro, which offers wearable and gear-mountable cameras, engagement rates as high as 11% were seen and more than two million impressions after testing keyword targeting in timelines across four marketing campaigns. This advertising is not…

An introduction to creating campaigns with Vine

By now you might well have heard of Vine, the latest feature available on Twitter that lets you capture just 6 seconds of footage. There in lies the creative element to Vine… how do you make 6 seconds of engaging and exciting video? Vine is a great marketing tool for getting your message out there in an interesting and attention grabbing way. The main advantage of Vine is that this can be achieved relatively quickly. However, the temptation can then be to make something fast, without a well thought out plan of action. Any marketing output, no matter how light-hearted or small, has a direct reflection on yourself /company, so it pays to have a clear and concise message. You can download Vine for free.

Getting started with Vine

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Agencies give their views on how companies can get social engagement in six seconds

Last month Twitter announced its entrance into the video sharing arena, with the introduction of Vine, a mobile app that allows users to capture and share short six-second looping videos. In this post, I'll look at how marketers view the potential of Vine and advise on how it should be integrated into campaigns. Currently only available on iOS, but with plans to bring it to other platforms in the future, iPhone and iPod touch users can download the free Vine app from the app store, recording videos and sharing them on the Vine network itself and Twitter. Already dubbed the ‘Instagram for video’, initial response to the innovation has been generally positive – though with a few caveats. “I think Vine is a perfect fit…

S**t happens...

There's a lot of discussion in the press after the hacking of Burger King's Twitter account, and more recently the same has happened to Jeep, as it has many brands before. What are the implications?

It's time for brands to step up

The talk now of course is about security, protecting brands that use Twitter enabling multi-factor authentication (as Facebook do) and so on. We need to make it *safe*. Haha - Are you kidding me, aren't we missing the point? Do brands need armbands and guarantees before they feel safe in the murky and uncontrollable world of social media? This issue of security is symptomatic of the bigger problem, I feel. Let's be clear here, it's not Twitter's 'fault', they provide a free service for us all to use, if they can provide additional free features, then great (paid ones if we want…

Layout update offers new header image

Importance: [rating=3] Recommended link: Twitter blog announcement

Marketing implications of Twitter change

From September 18th Twitter updated their profile page layout. The most significant change relevant to marketers is that a profile image can be uploaded. Recent images uploaded have also been given more prominence. It’s a move which mirrors a similar feature on company pages for Facebook and in Google+. The layout change also appears to give more scope for updating the background image to give more information about a company. Increased horizontal space now seems to be available for this than has been possible in the last couple of years. The examples that Twitter gives of using the new header option aren’t too inspiring. Twitter’s own new profile page is limited. You can see from this example that the layout change does give more emphasis to your URL and the value proposition, you offer followers through Twitter, now placing…

Interest targeting enables targeting by 350 interest categories and @usernames

Importance: [rating=3] Recommended link: Twitter advertising blog The Twitter advertising blog has announced an improvement to targeting of its Promoted Tweets advertising which takes it closer to Facebook’s targeting options. Dubbed “interest targeting”, there are two options for targeting:

1. Targeting by 350 interest categories

Broad categories of interest can be targeted using selection from these categories:

2. Targeting by @username

Although the category-based targeting was most widely covered, more intriguing is the targeting by @username. This looks more useful for micro-targeting since you can create a custom segment based on related brands and celebrities. It’s similar to the Facebook feature to target ads according to the Likes of users. Note though, that this does not enable you to target specific users. Twitter explains: “Custom segments let you reach users with similar interests to that @​username’s followers;…

5 simple techniques to consider to increase your Twitter following

I’m often asked how you can build followers on Twitter. The truth is that there isn’t any secret to doing this and buying followers or using autofollow systems is a short sighted cheat which isn’t a good idea. Buying followers is like hiring people to line up outside your bar to make it look busy. You might get some new people lining up because of the crowd, but if your bar sucks, they won’t be staying no matter how many people you’ve paid to get in line. Leveraging Twitter for your brand marketing simply takes hard work and effort. Here are five ways I've found effective to build your brand on Twitter:

#1 Participate in chats

There are regularly scheduled Twitter chats on just about any subject you can think of. Whether its industries or special interests, there’s a good bet there’s a regular…

...from notepad sketch to more than 140 million active users...

If you're based in the UK, you've likely heard the announcement this week from Twitter about UK usage of Twitter from the traditional media. As a big fan of Twitter I wanted to look beyond the "10 million users" headline to see about how this compares to use in other countries. Twitter has certainly come a long way since founder Jack Dorsey sketched out this wireframe in 2006! Notice how the status updates are "in bed" and "going to park" - content sharing wasn't on the wire at this point! Appropriately, the current coverage stems from a single tweet sent out from the official @TwitterUK sent this tweet out on Tuesday: Snapshot of Twitter in the UK: 10m active users, 80% of which are also active on mobile. And an office that’s…