In the social media world, the key to financial stability is buy-in from the world’s Fortune 500 companies. Facebook definitely reigns king in this department as nearly every major brand across the globe has an established presence on the Facebook platform. One of the keys to Facebook’s success is the ease with which a user can quickly find a company’s Facebook Page (although we will say that we applaud Twitter for attempting their “Verified” system as their are fairly sizable community run brand pages on Facebook) and the fact that the Palo Alto technology company jumped to head start in 2007 when Pages launched.
Now Foursquare and Twitter have their eyes set on a more user friendly presentation of the top brands using their respective platforms. NYC based start-up Foursquare recently created a Pages Gallery, which is essentially a gallery of all the brands on the geo-location platform. Rumors are now swirling the social media community that Twitter is looking imitate Facebook style pages for its brands. Below, we present you with a brief overview.
Pages Gallery
Before the Pages Gallery, finding brands on Foursquare was incredibly difficult unless they were considered important enough to be listed at the bottom of Foursquare’s home page. Most likely Foursquare’s early intent was for brands with the deepest pockets to vie for visibility on the Foursquare home page, but this strategy will only take a start-up competing for time and money with Facebook and Twitter so far.
Despite the fact companies could offer tips on their products, exclusive deals, and fun badges related to their products, lacking an easy discover method on Foursquare meant that consumers often missed the these cool marketing initiatives from their favorite brands unless they were a fanboy or fangirl. Several sites like Foursquare Brands tried to keep track of all the brands on the geo-location site, but even Foursquare Brands had difficultly keeping track as the service scaled.
Enter the Pages Gallery. Just like it sounds, Foursquare now presents its users with a full gallery of major brands on Foursquare and while this sounds simple, it’s huge leap forward for the young company. By enabling users to search for their favorite brands in a user friendly manner, Foursquare is not only meeting the needs of their users but creating real estate that will entice more brands to follow suit.
The gallery feature offers a simple tool for browsing different brands by all sorts of different queries such as popularity, how recently they joined Foursquare, and whether or not a brand is trending. The gallery will also suggest pages that are similar to brands you or your friends have connected with in the past. One glaring area of need as assessed by our team is the lack of ability to view the gallery from the Foursquare mobile app where the majority of users are accessing Foursquare. Once this capability is developed, the Pages Gallery will instantly become a much more useful tool.
As more consumers begin to follow brands closely on Foursquare, it would seem as though Foursquare stands to provide a unique niche that Facebook is not filling as well with Facebook Places. Imagine in the future that you purchase a coke from a vending machine and that you are automatically checked into vending machine’s location at the click of the button. Now further imagine, Coca-Cola’s brand page sends you a message that you are two vending machine purchases away from not only Coca-Cola vending badge but a $0.50 discount on your next vending purchase and a chance to win free prizes.
This would certainly seem to encourage brand loyalty and sales. It’s also something that is extremely unique and will continue to improve the practical and emotional connection between brand and consumer. Foursquare is definitely a tool that will only continue to grow for brands.
Facebook Style Pages for Twitter
Since Twitter’s inception, the micro-blogging platform has engaged in an intense battle with Facebook for “darling” status among Silicon Valley insiders. On many occasions over the last years, both platforms have been guilty of copy cat features and marketing initiatives. Some of you might remember how upset Twitter became last year when Facebook completely copied their Twitter Tales by rolling out Facebook Stories (heck, even Google got in the mix with Google Stories).
In what may be considered a response to what Foursquare has done, Twitter is reportedly considering an option for brands to do Facebook style pages. The so called pages would work in a similar way to Facebook pages as well, providing brands with their own space to deliver content and encourage Twitter users to follow them. Advertisers could deliver tailored messages to their followers and serving as a central hub for companies to coordinate campaigns.
Twitter CEO Dick Costelo is reportedly the one championing the project. The tech suits and investors have long sought a way to further monetize the micro blogging site beyond Promoted Tweets. Rumors indicate that Twitter is contemplating charging brands for use of the Twitter Pages. Twitter has failed in the past at other monetization features, most recently and notably, ‘quick bar‘ on their official mobile applications.
Thus far, Twitter’s brand advertising has been limited to three products: “Promoted Tweets,” “Promoted Trends,” and “Promoted Accounts”. While everybody most likely knows the first two promotions, Promoted Accounts offers companies or agencies the ability to promote their accounts by intelligently suggesting the account to Twitter users as part of the “Who to Follow” feature.
Pages for brands would seemingly change Twitter’s whole dynamic. At its core, the microblogging platform is better developed than Facebook for customer services, public relations, and dissemination of core brand messaging. Millions of users leverage Twitter on a daily basis for breaking news about their favorite products. It’s also really hard to imagine how these Twitter pages would be utilized in a different manner than a brand’s Facebook Page. If Twitter ends up heading down this path, its critical that there is a unique Twitter edge to it.
However, Twitter knows that over 50% of their active users access Twitter.com on a daily basis so it’s difficult to shake the idea that brand pages with visible real advertising real estate is not monetarily beneficial to Twitter in the long run especially knowing their executive management is desperate to figure out a way to better monetize the platform. Perhaps Twitter Pages will provide a more effective forum for group discussion on Twitter which is lacking at the moment. Because Twitter opened up so early to third-party development, they are fighting an uphill and expensive battle to bring certain core user experiences under their control and this is one of them.
