The latest enhancements to Twitter will make the microblogging
site more effective and engaging for both consumers and marketers,
Twitter chief operating officer Dick Costolo told more than 2,000
marketers recently.
Speaking at Connections '10, the annual three-day conference for
users of ExactTarget's on-demand email marketing and interactive
marketing solutions, Costolo said the revamped Twitter makes it
easier for users to see information about the authors of Twitter
posts, engage in conversations, and more easily link to photos and
videos.
"The new Twitter provides a richer, more compelling environment
for businesses and customers to engage in conversation," he
said.
Costolo spoke after the unveiling of the ExactTarget Interactive
Marketing Hub and CoTweet 3.0 Enterprise Edition. The Interactive
Marketing Hub is designed to allow marketers to power all forms of
real-time, interactive marketing across email, social media
networks, mobile devices, and websites. Marketing professionals can
plan, monitor, and track these marketing programs via one dashboard
that aggregates all customer interaction, according to
ExactTarget.
The developer's new CoTweet solution allows marketers using
Twitter and Facebook to link Facebook Fan pages to existing CoTweet
workgroups. In addition, marketing pros can export tweets and
Facebook posts to the Salesforce customer relationship management
(CRM) solution, and manage social media interactions plus other
interactive marketing channels via the Interactive Marketing Hub,
the company said.
"Consumers are talking about and engaging with brands on e-mail,
Twitter, and Facebook, but marketers have struggled to connect the
channels and engage in the real-time conversation," said Scott
Dorsey, ExactTarget co-founder and CEO. "The innovations announced
this week break down the silos between channels and allow marketers
to drive deeper engagement and more effective interactive
marketing."
Over time, Twitter's influence on marketing is expected to
increase, said Augie Ray, senior analyst at Forrester Research, in
a recently released report.
"The immediate impact is relatively minor; for instance, some
users will have to alter their Twitter background graphics. But the
long-term effects could be substantial as Twitter focuses on
powering growth by improving Twitter consumption - which will in
turn make Twitter a more powerful platform for influence
marketing," Ray wrote in a summary of the report, "Twitter's New
Interface Will Drive More Reach For Marketers."