A Vision for a Twitter Inspired Landing Page
Dharmesh Shah of Hubspot responded to my last blog entry by expressing this concern:
“I was very interested in the notion of linking one’s profile page on twitter to a specific/custom landing page on your primary website…My one concern would be: When visitors to a twitter profile click on the website link, are they expecting to learn more about the company/offering or more about the individual? Does the intermediate page just get in the way?”
My notion of a brand’s landing page for Twitter would feature the brand and the individuals that work there-not a single individual.
It would feature the more human qualities of a brand. For example, Flickr photos from a staff get together, funny quotes from the company’s leadership, cool or unusually things you could do with a product.
Take Hubspot for example, I would like to see pictures of Hubspot at social media events, links to blog entries that discuss Hubspot, some cool or little known facts about how to use Hubspot and podcasts and video interviews with the companies leadership. It would be great to capture testimonials from people using Twitter Grader and post their Twitter handle too. And as an added benefit, interview and feature some of your favorite people on twitter using Hubspot and what they love about it.
If I am in a personal relationship with a brand, which following a brand on twitter might just qualify as one, then I would like the brand’s profile to serve as a special doorway granting me access to a place that other regular customers do not have access to.
After all, I have expressed this interest, demonstrated by following you, that I want to engage–so don’t invite me to the same homepage that all of your customers go to–create a VIP section just for me. Show me you’re paying attention to me as closely as I’m paying attention to you.
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Now, that’s what I call rapid response!
You make some great points. I’m mull over this a bit more (and talk to some folks that are smarter than I am).
We might even have something like this built within the HubSpot product itself (to make it easier for small businesses to engage the social web).
Comment by Dharmesh Shah — October 23, 2008 @ 8:22 pm
Interesting conversation you’ve kicked off here, Zach.
Here are a couple thoughts to add:
- One alternative to sending people to the homepage from the main landing page is to send them to the company’s dedicated “Twitter Page”. For example, Zappos has one here and we have one here. I think these pages, as you say, “feature the more human qualities of a brand.”
- Although I would probably prefer a company Twitter page linked to from Twitter, there are probably a lot of people who would prefer (and be less confused by) the company home page.
- A related discussion we’ve been having at HubSpot is, “Should brand Twitter accounts interact w/ people, or should all HubSpot’s Twitter interaction be done on personal accounts of HubSpot employees?” Right now we’re leaning towards the later, mainly because it seems weird to talk to a brand. You can’t talk to HUBSPOT, you talk to PEOPLE at HubSpot.
Comment by Rick Burnes — October 24, 2008 @ 5:33 am
Twitter page links I provided don’t seem to be working. They are:
http://www.hubspot.com/twitter/
http://twitter.zappos.com/
Comment by Rick Burnes — October 24, 2008 @ 5:35 am