In a nutshell

Twitter recently published a new strategy guide packed with data, tips and best practices, aiming to support businesses to optimise their tweet strategy and improve their presence on the platform. The guide walks brands through the steps of all-things Twitter, from optimising their profile and creating organic and paid posts, to revising how they measure their goal’s success.

What does this mean?

The guide highlights the importance of being on Twitter to reach new audiences, stating that 76% of users state that conversations on the platform have led them to make a purchase. It also clears up common misconceptions like ‘the wittiest Tweets win’ and advises brands to keep their posts to the point, including clear calls to action, relevant links and just a couple of hashtags.

Brands can also find useful insights to review their marketing strategy, redefining their goals and how they measure success on the platform; “The easiest way to make the most out of the conversation happening on Twitter is to dive right in. Tweet about a variety of topics and themes that matter to your business and your followers and iterate based on which perform best. Things like creative, tone, copy, and mentions of trending events/other brands can have a big impact on your brand's success on Twitter,” advises the guide.

In a nutshell

Google is expanding eligibility for enhanced product experiences in search, for site owners who use product structured data. According to a recent announcement, there are now the two categories of search experience for product and ecommerce websites:

• Merchant listing experiences for web pages that allow a shopper to buy a product on site. These offer enhanced experiences including the Shopping Knowledge panel and Popular Products, as well as shopping experiences in Google Images and Google Lens.

• Product rich result snippets are designed for a broader set of web pages with product information – including pages that sell products, publish product reviews, and/or aggregate information from other sites.

What does this mean?

Merchants could benefit from these new features and functionalities, showcasing their products in more places and present them in a more visually appealing way. To take advantage of this they need to make sure they use product structure data and/or Merchant Center. To understand the requirements of these experiences, they can use merchant listing and product snippet reports, which are grouped under a new Shopping section in the Search Console navigation bar. These could help site owners see errors, warnings, and valid pages for markup implemented on their site.

In a nutshell

Search advertising is an important part of digital marketing, making up 50% of the digital ad market in 2021, according to IAB UK’s latest Digital Ad spend report. Prioritising their search shopping campaigns’ strategy could help brands to better promote their products which could boost traffic to their site and increase their audience. But where do they start? In a recent article, Lottie Namakando, iCrossing UK’s head of paid media and planning, highlights the importance of shaping a well-thought through strategy and carefully planning the first steps to make the most out of ads.

What does this mean?

“Understanding the interplay between the platform interface and the feed itself is the best place to start,” advises Lottie. “A lot of the performance derived through shopping campaigns is optimised through the feed and this is generally the only hands-on method of optimising performance. Depending on the size of the brand and the feed, optimisation can be done either via a third-party provider or, for smaller scale feeds, manually via Google Sheets.”