THE SCOOP ON TWITTER'S NEW BRAND PAGES

Watch out, Facebook & LinkedIn – Twitter’s gaining on you!!   With the launch in December of its new Brand Pages, Twitter is becoming every bit as relevant as Facebook and LinkedIn with respect to business practices.  An informative article on AdAge Digital outlines in detail what Twitter’s Brand Pages are all about.

The article states that, “Twitter is looking to strengthen its relationship with advertisers by launching brand pages… a part of a more comprehensive redesign.”  (I discussed Twitter’s redesign in my post of February 5.)

As of December, 2011, Twitter’s brand pages were limited to companies such as Coca-Cola, HP, Nike, McDonald’s, DisneyPixar and a few more - 21 advertising partners in total as well as a few select charities and individuals. You and I will need to use the new version of Twitter in order to see these enhanced profile pages.
 The AdAge Digital article further sites that : “According to an email from a Twitter account executive obtained by Ad Age, the roll-out of brand pages to a larger group of brands and partners will begin Feb. 1, and advertisers must have an active insertion order in Twitter's system of $25,000 to qualify.”
Twitter’s enhanced brand pages allow users to shop and play games, and are similar in theory to Facebook’s brand pages.  According to the article, “Brand pages can be customized with large header images that advertisers can use to give greater visibility to their logo or other branded elements, which are often partially obscured by the timeline of tweets in the standard format. They can also be programmed to keep a particular tweet at the top of the timeline, which can auto-expand to reveal an embedded photo or video without the user taking action -- thus giving the page more visual impact.”

It will be interesting to watch what happens with Twitter’s brand pages – obviously at the moment, while in their experimental stages, the average small business owner will not want to spend $25, 00.00 to get in on these brand pages.  According to Twitter, they will “…slowly roll out enhanced profile pages to a wider audience of brands in the coming months.”
As with anything, they will, in the future, (hopefully) become more mainstream and we’ll be seeing more and more of them!  I know I will be keeping an eye on them to see what happens!