Moments are to Twitter as Discover is to Snapchat. But where Snapchat fails to embrace the user, Twitter integrates brand and buddy in one seamless stream of popular activity.
Advertisers and social media strategists have all but mastered the art of redesigning and cropping their advertisements into tailored Discover stories for Snapchat, but they miss the key role of providing value instead of cluttering the conversation.
Enter Twitter Moments.
Twitter is a flowing stream of information that demands its users to fight the current to pick up everything from the latest news to the latest trend. For those who are not active Twitter stream swimmers, the social network and its reverse timeline of 140-character information can be daunting. The Moments feature uses human curators to highlight the newest and hottest trends & delivers them in a neat package.
Twitter didn’t take long finding ways to monetize its new offering. Two weeks after the launch of Moments, Promoted Moments were announced to start trial runs within the Moments stream. Promoted Moments will show brand narratives that include everything from real-time events to seasonally relevant ones and those defined as “authentic narratives around a brand’s values” in multimedia format.
These sponsored Moments allow brands complete control to present a series of different tweets – and even Vines – to tell their story. Each Promoted Moment will last up to 24 hours with the ability to be constantly updated.
As brands start creating content for Promoted Moments, it’s important to remember what contributing to conversation means for users.
- Brand-generated content gives a behind-the-scenes vantage point to audiences.
People are increasingly more interested in the exclusive, behind-the-scenes access to the brands and people they love. With this information ready at brands’ fingertips constantly, Promoted Moments gives a new outlet for brands to give the people what they want; and, more importantly, what they are eager to engage with.
- Conversation contribution is not the same as conversation curation.
As brands highlight Moments to share with the public, it is important to remember that promotional content for the brand might not be the most interesting piece of information to audiences. Starting a conversation and contributing to it is much different than pushing conversation to viewers. People will interact more purposefully with topics they feel their input is valued in.
- Moments give audiences short-bursts of information for a short amount of time.
With a short shelf-life, Promoted Moments gives users the unique opportunity to be part of a conversation in one moment with a brand. This is perfect for live-events and short-term specials, offers or deals. Although not all audiences will tune in to the conversation during its Moment to shine, the overall potential of reach in a short-blast of curated information garners great potential for brands to share their story in the best package they can.
- Multiple Tweets together defy the limited character rule.
With the potential of streaming multiple 140-character tweets together in one Moment, brands have a unique storytelling opportunity in Twitter to build a story within a string of Tweets. The limited messaging of 140-characters at least loosens its grip. The ability to tell a story throughout multiple pieces allows brands to spread information across multiple photos, videos or messages.
As Promoted Moments continue to grow, brands have the ability to provide unique conversation to their audiences and be an important facilitator in conversation any given Moment of the day.