Everybody knows that a healthy company needs to have a strong presence on all major social media platforms. The reasons are quite obvious. On the one hand, having a solid online presence is now the backbone of all branding endeavours. In other words, branding cannot be separated from social media. And as the narrative goes, the more platforms the merrier, because each platform tends to attract certain types of communities. On the other hand, social media is also a great tool when it comes to sales and lead generation. In fact, the business model of all major social media players relies heavily on convincing the marketing community to spend money on their platforms.

Thus, creating a friendly online presence is a must. But how do you choose the right social networks for your brand and marketing goals? In today's article, we will take a closer look at the benefits of having a Twitter page. We will try to cover this platform from two separate points of view: branding and lead generation capabilities, so you can decide if you can benefit from including it in your digital strategy.

Branding: how many legs do you need to walk straight?

Nowadays, a sound branding strategy requires a strong presence on as many channels as possible. Of course, Twitter is one of the top three social platforms, and having no Twitter presence could probably be compared to missing a leg. The blue bird is best known for its lightning fast news communication. A brand can benefit immensely if it connects to key accounts active in a certain domain. Besides providing market awareness, keeping in touch with every new event or all relevant news tends to build credibility and trust. More so, it is generally accepted that people that hangout on Twitter are more influential. Whereas Facebook is a more personal platform, Twitter tends to attract more followers in areas where communication speed is a key business element. On the other hand, Twitter is a great tool to predict future market developments in any domain. You just need to follow the right people and join the right groups, and you will certainly be among the first people to foresee and act on a trend.

With a well thought plan, it is easy to create buzz around a topic, event or product because messages are super-easy to retweet. And if you follow the right people or if you are followed by your target audience, the news can spread far and wide. Therefore, organic reach onTwitter is a force to be reckoned with, especially when you double down on it with a paid boost. If you thought that the metaphor with the missing leg was a bit too much, you were probably right. There are some industries that can survive without a Twitter account. But companies in entertainment, IT, news or communication that do not have a Twitter account, are probably missing two legs. With this positive note, let us now move forward and look at the paid advertising system.

Twitter ads: add salt to your campaigns

Don't be tricked into believing thatTwitter Ads is a Facebook Manager wannabe just because the ad configuration system looks the same. There are stark and noteworthy differences between the two platforms when it comes to advertising. Probably the most important one is that people spend time on these platforms with different purposes in mind. On the one hand, people sign-in to Facebook to get in touch with their friends and families and consume meaningless but recomforting content. On the other hand,Twitter users tend to be avid consumers of every new piece of information. Andas we noted a bit earlier, as a group, the latter tends to be more influent, for the simple reason that on Twitter, opinions matter more than on any other platform. (Well, the downside is that people can easily get trapped in the so-called echo-chambers of ideas – but honestly speaking, for marketers this can also be an advantage.)

Of course, the list of benefits expands way beyond the user profile. Here we would point out two really cool advertising options. The first and best feature in our opinion is that you only pay for results. This means that if you optimise your campaign for a particular objective (tweet engagement or website conversion for example), you will only be charged when that objective is met. In this regard, the billing method is similar Google’s AdWords. The second really nice feature is that beside interests, marketers can target keywords and hashtags. This option is especially powerful when one would like to monetise viral keywords and hashtags. Smart features can provide smart results, and that's why we love it so much.

Wrap-up

This is not to say that one should useTwitter ads over Facebook or Google ads. If you are not new to our blog, you know that we are strong advocates of compound value when it comes to marketing campaigns. We strongly believe that success is directly linked to using as many platforms as possible. And this is one of the main reasons why we wanted Sether to be a centralisation tool. We just wanted to point out that Twitter has certain particularities that can enhance a well thought all-round campaign. Paired with other advertising platforms, Twitter can play its part in delivering the much desired omni-channel effect everybody is looking for.

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