Twitter has jumped on the most popular trend by releasing a feature called “Fleets” for users worldwide. It is pretty much similar to stories on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and of course, Snapchat. “Fleet” means “momentary tweets” – tweets you don’t want to be permanent.
The Fleet is great for Twitter users who want another way to talk to their followers. They are ideal for businesses that are already succeeding with social media stories elsewhere.
Twitter launched a pilot program in Brazil in March 2020 before launching the program for audiences and marketers worldwide. Over the year, more locations were added, and the feature went live for US users in November 2020.
But what exactly are the Twitter fleets, and how can brands leverage this feature in their social media marketing strategies? In this post, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about the Twitter fleet.
Introduction to Twitter Fleets
Well, unlike regular tweets, fleets disappear after 24 hours and cannot be retweeted or liked. You can react to the text, tweets, photos, or videos and customize your Fleet with different background and text options.
Also, you can respond by tapping on the Fleets and sending a direct message or emoji to the creator and reacting to the Fleet, which will start the DM conversation.
There are also plans to introduce stickers and live broadcasts for the Fleet in the future. A user’s Fleet will appear at the top of their home page, and anyone who can access your complete profile will be able to find your Fleet there.
If your DM is open, people will be able to react to your Fleet with text-based messages or emojis.
Twitter Fleets for Businesses
As always, just because a popular social media platform introduces a new feature does not mean that you need to use it. Not all gimmicks are helpful for all purposes.
Before you include Fleets on your daily social media to-do list, it is helpful to see how it can fit your overall social strategy.
The Fleet also currently lacks some of the more attractive features of competitors, such as Instagram Stories. No stickers, no link linking ability, no live streaming. At the moment, these are tiny bare bones.
Every time a new platform is launched or a platform launches a new feature; it presents an opportunity to attract attention, which has become an increasingly scarce resource. Platforms prefer to prioritize their new features, make high-profile users use them, and put them in front of more and more people. With Instagram Stories being used by 500 million people every day, short-lived full-screen content has proven itself as one of the most popular forms of media consumption. The Fleet is an opportunity to be at the forefront of this new opportunity.
Small businesses, educational organizations, news outlets, large companies, nonprofits, and more are adopting the Twitter fleet. Take a quick look at some of the ways your brand can place Fleets into your marketing strategy:
1. More Engagement
With Fleets, brands can help display content to their customer and fan quickly, with little concern for the content’s longevity. And this can lead to greater engagement with more fans. Still, the Fleet has a long way to go before it offers equal opportunities for stories.
Beyond the top-of-the-funnel engagement, Fleets can be beneficial for giveaways and flash sales. We can expect brands to start using this channel for promotion. But if done clumsily and unofficially, this may reduce engagement. Like everything else, it will be essential to maintain social balance.
2. Drive Awareness about New Products & Services
Launch a new product and highlight the best-selling items with full-screen photos and videos appearing in Fleets and show off your merchandise. Use the overlay text options on your photos to give viewers highlights of your products.
Fleet about upcoming products, best-selling items, or last-chance purchases. With Fleets, you can share full-screen photos to showcase your inventory.
3. Share Time-Restricted Content
The Twitter fleet can be a great way to communicate timely information quickly. Many topics will be better covered in a fleet than an entire post that will become irrelevant once a launch or event passes. You can also share certain information such as flash sales, discount codes, and gifts. Only those who see the Fleet will have access. It will encourage more people to stay with your organization’s social media channel — it is a low-barrier point in the relationship between users and your brand.
4. Prioritize Real-Time Interaction
Fleet has allowed Twitter to open its doors to encourage real-time interaction, which works for brands and digital creators on many levels. They can be the first people to make announcements/statements, interact directly with fans, and resolve customer complaints while still offering limited-time offers, flash sales, giveaways, etc. Additionally, this has the potential to diminish trolling if the content is contextual to just a day as opposed to content that is ever-present on your page.
5. Host Daily Giveaways
While you can advertise a giveaway in a standard tweet, all of this information can be published in multiple posts or threads due to Twitter’s character count limitations. And, since Twitter’s feed is very fast-paced, you’ll need to post more than once to get a large number of entries in a short time.
With features like Fleets, you will not only be able to post multiple pages of tweets in a single fleet story, but your content will also appear in the Fleets area above the user’s feed. It means that the risk of your contest announcement being inundated by tweets from other accounts is low.
Additionally, because Fleets and Stories only last 24 hours, viewers may feel a sense of urgency. Like coupons or sales, viewers want to enter your competition, see your entire story, or visit your website before the Fleet disappears.
6. Share Customer Content without Obstructing Your Feed
When you need to share a complimentary tweet with the world but don’t want to ruin the flow of your post, you can share it in a fleet.
7. Stand out from the standard Twitter users
Twitter has 145 million daily active users. Five hundred million tweets come out every day. It is candid for your message to get lost in the chaos.
Taking advantage of this new format with fewer users is an easy way to stand out from the crowd. Instead of being swallowed by a news feed, your post can be at the very top of the home page.
8. Build Personal Relationships with Your Target Customer
The Fleet allows viewers to respond to the Fleet with a text or emoji through a private Direct Message (DM). While Twitter is generally a very public-facing format, the Fleets give way to more personal relationships between you and your followers.
9. Deliver Insider Info
Get Twitter users to see your brand behind the scenes with employee spotlights, executive bios, manufacturing tidbits, and how-tos.
We hope you find this guide helpful for the use of the latest Twitter fleets, which are quite helpful for marketing your business better on Twitter. Bookmark this page, share it with your colleagues, and keep checking back for more tips about Twitter marketing. Good luck with fleeting!