As we know, social media is an important aspect of eCommerce industry. In this context, let us talk about Twitter and its importance to every online merchant. It is an invaluable online marketing tool especially if you know how to make your business tweets reach your visitors. The way it drives traffic to your online store and allows you to engage both your prospective and existing customer is unrivalled. To make this cutting-edge Twitter tool more popular for online business, Twitter has introduced a new feature called Custom Timeline.
Custom timeline – why to opt for it?
Custom timelines with its unique features allow you to name it and choose the tweet you want to add to it. It enables you to organise tweets into differentiated timeline buckets based on your products, any event or holiday sale. This means conversation around your products and services or any topic/event takes off on Twitter and you have the prospect to create a timeline that surfaces what you believe to be the most noteworthy. This new timeline helps you to get more control over how tweets are organised and delivered on the Twitter platform.
- Each of the timelines is public and contains its own page on Twitter.com thereby making it easy to share with others who can follow in real time as you wish to add more tweets.
- Each timeline can be identified by a title and with a 160-character description.
- Every new tweet appears on top of the timeline.
- Custom timeline is also a part of the Twitter for websites thus enabling you to embed these timelines on your business website.
Is the custom timeline different from the Twitter lists?
Yes, to some extent. Custom timeline focuses on content whereas Twitter lists target Twitter users. Further, with custom timeline, you can curate the content that you wish to appear and accordingly add or remove Tweets to suit your requirements. Whereas lists are created by adding Twitter users with little focus on how content will appear.
How to get started with custom timeline?
You can create, add and share custom timeline right from TweetDeck. In TweetDeck all Twitter timelines are displayed in columns. You can manage searches, lists, multiple accounts and now the custom timeline.
Steps to create custom timelines:
- Select and click custom timeline link from the left side menu and click on ‘create custom timeline’ from the pop-up window that appears
- Add a name and description to the new custom timeline
- You are now ready to add tweets to your timeline through drag and drop. This can be done by placing the column of tweets to the immediate left or right from your custom timeline column
- Add content to the new column by using the ‘Move’ icon that appears under each tweet. Click the icon and drag the tweet into the new column
- Alternatively you can select ‘add to custom timeline’ from the drop-down menu
Once the custom timeline is complete, share it via Twitter and other social networks with either a link or embed it into blog post. Use the ‘setting’ icon on top of the custom timeline column and click on share. You can know the real value of custom timeline by sharing it. For instance, accumulating customer reviews about a particular product or service can serve as a useful addition to that product’s page on your site.
The custom timeline can be shared in one of the following ways-
- Tweet about the timeline
- Embed the timeline on your website
- View it on twitter.com
As an online entrepreneur, you are probably wondering how to utilise such a big advantage for your store. Well, there isn’t a single solution but here are some ideas to help you use the custom timeline in the best way possible.
#1. Twitter chat:
Custom timelines are the best way to select and organise tweets from a recent Twitter chat. Moreover, you can also host live questions and answer session on Twitter and present the best tweet into a timeline.
#2. Product Sales and promotions:
If you tweet about special promotion or seasonal sales, you can create a timeline to collect the responses. Holiday seasons are the best time to take advantage of this new feature.
#3. Customer reviews:
Once you collect customer reviews tweets you can embed them on your website.
#4. New products and services:
Tweet about any new products and services that you add to your store and organise them in custom timeline. You can also share it through Twitter or embed right on the home page of your website.
If you have any suggestions about Custom Timeline please let us know in the comments below.
Images: ”LONDON – JULY 31: Social networking and microblogging site Twitter announces that its 20 billionth tweet has been posted on July 31, 2011 in London, UK. / Shutterstock.com“
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