Twitter has announced a great new tool that will help users organize their tweets and tweets about them, giving marketers a powerful new tool in their extensive and continually growing social media toolbox.
Twitter?s custom timelines allow users to create a timeline of tweets for just about anything?events, topics, breaking news, chats and more. The tweets will be live on a dedicated public Twitter page, and there?s even the ability to embed the custom timeline on your website. The feature is currently only available using Tweetdeck. An API is in beta testing and is expected to be available at a later date.
The opportunities for custom timelines are endless. Individual users may create a custom timeline for their favorite tweets or tweets that interest them. Bloggers can use custom timelines to share tweets discussing a blog topic, store future blog ideas, or a log of a Twitter chat they hosted.
For businesses, custom timelines will allow for enhanced marketing on Twitter. Tweets will no longer be out of sight and out of mind the moment it trickles off the follower?s Twitter feed. Businesses can create a custom timeline for each product or service they offer, or they can create timelines for a specific feed or topic.
The uses for business users are endless and are only limited to the creativity of those creating the timeline. Custom timelines will be especially helpful for promoting events, announcing new products, or for keeping track of a specific ad campaign. Embedding custom timelines on your blog or website will also encourage more views, potentially increasing you return on Twitter.
If you want to create a custom timeline, you?ll need to be using TweetDeck. Creating a custom timeline is incredibly easy?just add a new column in TweetDeckand select ?custom timeline.? Name your timeline, offer a short description, and save.
After you have created your new timeline, adding a tweet is as easy as dragging and dropping. A move icon will also be availableon tweets after you have created a custom timeline. If you want to remove a tweet you have added, just click the ?X? icon at the bottom of the tweet in the custom timeline.
Embedding or sharing custom Twitter timelines is also easy and an essential step if you want to extend the reach, lifetime, and effectiveness of your tweets. You can easily tweet a link to the custom timeline, or if you prefer to use another share tool, you can view the timeline and use whatever share tool you like.
The process for embedding a custom timeline on a website is the same as embedding a timeline or a tweet from TweetDeck. You can create a customized widget using the share function. You will be able to adjust the height, theme and link color as you see fit.
Custom timelines now allows brands to organize their content, freeing it from the unending stream of new tweets and making it easily accessible for their followers to find content they care about. Create custom timelines that revolve around your customer?s wants and needs.
This new feature can be very powerful for businesses who use it correctly by creating an online environment that encourages engagement and discussion. As with most marketing, blatant marketing messages will not work. You?ll need to create a conversation with your followers, and encourage engagement with your brand.
There are already great examples of brands using custom timelines on Twitter to use as examples. Feel free to experiment with your own ideas, and use what works best for your brand.