Twitter, the social network home to more than 500 million users, is a great outlet for businesses to connect with one another as well as consumers. Earlier this week the major social media platform introduced a geo-targeting program through Twitter’s API, greatly improving the network’s overall worth to businesses worldwide.
The new tool allows marketers to send targeted tweets to a specific geographic location. Targeted tweets won’t be displayed to followers unless they reside in the targeted country. This means brands across the world can finally reduce the amount of Twitter accounts they own and focus solely on managing and analyzing a main brand account and any other handles essential to business – i.e., a specific account devoted to customer service or tech support.
The ability to position tweets to followers based on geography comes at an opportune time for a wide range of businesses with international relationships and consumers. Twitter users outside of the United States have grown significantly over the last three years – increasing 745 percent from 20 million users to 169 million.
Companies like Nike, McDonalds and Walmart currently own multiple verified Twitter accounts including: @NikeUK, @NikeGolfEU, @NikeRunningCAN, @McDonaldsEurope, @McDonaldsEgypt, @McDonaldsArabia, @WalmartCanada, @WalmartMexico. Finding these geographically focused accounts can be difficult for users and managing them is equally as hard on the brand’s social media team. The ability to consolidate Twitter accounts and speak to your audience from one, universal handle reduces stress on your marketing team, makes it easier for the recipient to initially find your brand and enables your marketing department to better organize all social media efforts and analysis.
Geo-targeting on Twitter delivers three main advantages:
- Bring relevance to consumers’ news feeds – If you’r a consumer in Egypt and follow the main @McDonalds account you’ll receive tweets you can’t understand because they are written in English, or deals that don’t pertain to your local McDonalds. Geo-targeting tools allow the main @McDonalds to send tweets written in Arabic to all Egyptian followers without posting on timelines of followers in other countries.
- Minimize the number of Twitter accounts – At first, brands with international followers rushed to obtain the best handle for their international purposes – @McDonaldsEurope is a great example. But now geo-targeting tools make these extra accounts unnecessary – your brand can interact with as many, or as few, geographic markets as you choose.
- Direct feedback channel – With multiple accounts it’s difficult to properly manage, track and analyze everything that takes place. Social media has become tone of the main ways brands receive customer feedback. With several different accounts in need of tracking, it’s rare to catch everything – possessing just one account allows your marketing team to better analyze comments, feedback and overall sharing statistics.
At Brandpoint, we know the importance of quality content and how an exceptional content marketing strategy can benefit your unique business needs. That’s why we stay on top of the latest trends and news throughout the content marketing, social media and mobile industries to keep your content marketing efforts ahead of the pack. Follow us on Twitter @Brandcontent.
