Tweet Tweet: What’s New on Twitter

The digital world we live and work in evolves fast - and to remain as industry experts, we need to keep up. In the last two weeks alone, Twitter launched three (yes, three) new apps, tools and updates that will undoubtedly trickle down to impact, amplify and/or alter how we PR pros engage with audiences. We may still only have 140 characters to do so, but here’s the latest and greatest in the Twitter-sphere:

- Twitter Dashboard: managing Twitter for a business just got a whole lot easier. Last week, Twitter introduced the new app, which is helping businesses connect with customers and their community at large through various high-level tools. With Dashboard, you can create custom feeds to see what others are saying about your business; questions, complaints, praise, you name it. Additionally, Dashboard allows you to schedule tweets and offers helpful inspiration and tips to jog creativity. 

Sounds great, right? For those of us in PR, Dashboard is like a one stop shop for all things needed to create an engaging, seamless and comprehensive Twitter experience. Not only does this support community management, it also allows us to be in control of when content is distributed, while offering helpful insights on the back end.

- Twitter Engage: a new app designed by Twitter, is geared towards the influential tweeters who have fans and followers with whom they interact. It highlights the most important interactions, mentions from verified users, tracks analytics of the users’ posts and provides a detailed performance of individual posts.

So how does this impact our roles? What’s important to know, is that Engage is available to all users (meaning you don’t need to be verified). As the thought leaders we represent work to boost their presence on Twitter, Engage will be a useful tool to help them interact with their followers, while simultaneously tracking all interactions to streamline measurement and analytics, so we can continuously learn and refine.

- Stickers: Tweeting pictures got easier when Twitter changed the character limit so that pictures don’t take up extra characters -- but last week, tweeting pictures got far more exciting, thanks to Stickers. Now, when users tweet a picture, they have the option to jazz it up by adding stickers.

Stickers isn’t strictly for entertainment and visual value - there’s a way to use them strategically too. Like hashtags, Twitter users can search specific stickers, which will take them to a timeline that shows how those exact stickers have been used worldwide. For PR pros, this is just another creative option to integrate into social campaigns, promotional posts and daily tweets to ensure they stand out.

In the competitive social media landscape, Twitter is constantly evolving to boost usage and engagement. For communicators and content marketers, it's important to keep an eye on what's new and how to creatively and strategically use them.