Twitter has launched its first brand pages in the United Kingdom. According to Twitter, companies have a branded page which consists of a banner, and a Tweet feed at the top of their page which can house other media such as video.

Twitter now forms part of integrated campaigns for UK companies which include Asda, Cadburys, EA Games’ FIFA and Sky HD. They join brands from the USA which began using the Twitter medium at the end of last year which included giants such as Bing, Dell, Heineken, Staples, HP and Coca-Cola.

A study undertaken by Simple Usability employed an eye tracking study to measure how the users’ eye movements change under different stimuli. The experiment delivered a Twitter brand page designed so that companies can get the most out of their Twitter exposure. The study also recognises the problems for brands and Twitter since more than 50% of all users access Twitter on cell phones so that they won’t actually see the branding no matter how effective it might be once the user looks at it. The idea is that the user clicks on a link to funnel them to more defined brand content.

In the more successful campaigns, according to Simple Usability, brand owners should have an effective header image, embedded media should be included in all Tweets, and content should be transparent because this is what users want from Twitter.

Marketing companies need to decide which media provider is best for them: Twitter, Facebook or Google +? In this battle, Twitter’s competitive advantage is the ease of interaction with clients. It gives the brand a chance to attract new followers and use analytics to measure and improve performance. It’s all about control.

Tim Friesner