Last week, Twitter finally rolled out its new ‘Bookmarks‘ feature to all users.
The option enables users to bookmark tweets that they want to save for later viewing, and is a great addition, since previously there was no easy way to save tweets for later reference other than “liking” them.
Unlike “liked” tweets (see what I did there) bookmarked tweets don’t signify an emotional response or an endorsement, nor do they show up publicly on your profile or timeline for other users to see. And perhaps most importantly, bookmarking a tweet doesn’t notify the original author.
And while the focus of the option is on general use, there are a few ways in which businesses can also benefit from this feature.
1. Bookmark tweets for customer support and feedback
As a marketer, you’re probably always monitoring tweets about your product so you can respond to them. And while happy tweets from customers are easy to acknowledge, sometimes you come across negative tweets that are a little more challenging to handle – these could be about a negative perception or an unhappy experience that a person has had with your product.
Finding negative tweets is extremely important, of course, because you then have the opportunity to address them directly, and turn adverse reactions into positive, happy outcomes. However, you’re not always able to immediately respond to a negative tweet because you need more time to figure out a solution or the best way to answer it.
But you don’t want to lose this tweet either. While you can easily “like” the positive tweets, you obviously don’t want to “like” negative tweet to bookmark it.
Until now, you’ve had to save the links to such tweets as a separate note, or email or DM them to yourself. But now, you can just bookmark them until you have a response or a solution ready.
2. Keep an eye on updates from your competitors
With the nifty use of a (private) Twitter list, combined with a column-based social media monitoring tool, it’s easy to keep an eye on your key competitors, so you’re always aware of what they’re up to.
Now, if you happen to spot a relevant update that your competitor just tweeted, and you want to save it so you can refer to it when you plan your product or marketing strategy, bookmarking will come in very handy.
But don’t forget, your competitors can do this with your tweets too.
3. You’re researching an idea for a new product line
If you just started working on a new product idea, you probably don’t want your existing customers to know until you’ve sketched out the details enough to announce them.
Now, if your plan involves listening to tweets in to identify existing usage patterns or behavior, you can use the bookmarking feature to bookmark all of the relevant tweets you find. This way, you can not only refer to the tweets later, but you can also embed them in your release announcement.
While I’m excited about the new bookmarking feature, I also wish Twitter would open up the API so that marketers could monitor bookmarked tweets in the social media marketing tool of their choice. That may be something they’ll add in future, but till then, these are a few ways to use the new option – and no doubt there are more businesses use cases also.