Social Media Site Looks To Support Growing Businesses

Leading social media platform Twitter has confirmed that its self-serve advertising platform is now open to small and medium-sized businesses in the UK and Ireland, following the launch of the service in the US earlier this year.

According to Twitter, the platform will allow small businesses to amplify their presence on the site through the use of Promoted Accounts and Promoted Tweets to build both an active community of followers and engage with users.

The move builds on the social media platform’s launch of specialist accounts @TwitterSmallBiz and @TwitterUKI_SME to provide guidance to small businesses, as well as a partnership with O2 to also support the community.

The latter involves O2 providing educational content from Twitter to the small business audience, while the telecommunications company is also launched a social insights tool to ensure growing companies can track the success of their activities.

As part of the initiative, O2 will also offer advertising credit for use on Twitter to eligible businesses.

Expert Opinion

As advocates of both the benefits of using social media and the important role that small businesses play in the economy, we think the launch of this new tool by Twitter is a great step forward. <br/> <br/>"It is a simple fact that start-ups often need advice and support on a range of matters when they are up and running, although some small-scale operations simply feel they do not have time to address certain issues. <br/> <br/>"This kind of platform offered by Twitter could help many SMEs with their growth plans, but it is vital they also plan ahead and ensure they have a proper support network – including legal advice – in place which allows them to deal with any of the growing pains that expansion can bring. <br/> <br/>"While social media offers great benefits, it is also important for businesses of all sizes to be aware of potential pitfalls which could create issues across an organisation. Again, quality legal advice on this issue should help in efforts to such problems affecting a company." Steven Beahan - Partner