With its newly released Dashboard app, Twitter is taking a big step in providing businesses of all sizes the tools they need to better serve their customers. Launched on June 28, Dashboard provides free, native – that is, within the proprietary Twitter platform – support for a number of important tasks brands previously turned to external, and often expensive, tools to accomplish.

Through Dashboard, businesses can:

• Monitor mentions and keywords
• Identify and engage with relevant industry conversations
• Schedule tweets
• Manage scheduled tweets across desktop and iOS devices
• Draw inspiration from customized tips and best practices
• Optimize your content with analytics

While numerous social media management platforms exist for these purposes, many companies don’t have the time or budget to invest in additional technology. These new native capabilities available through Dashboard make it easy and efficient for businesses to better engage and support their customers.

Why monitor brand mentions or keywords?

When we at ModSquad begin working with a new client, many are surprised to see how much conversation about their brand is happening on Twitter without them knowing. Twitter notifications will alert you to engagement with your tweets and mentions of your handle, but we digital detectives know many users discuss brands, products, and services without including the company’s handle in their tweet. Whether they’re praising or complaining, these tweets are equally as important for brands to address as those that tweet directly to their handle.

While customers who tweet about your company rather than at it may not expect a response, they may also just not know you’re active on Twitter. By replying to them, you’re not only recognizing their comment – thanking them for their praise or helping solve a problem – you will often gain a new follower, too!

Previously, you would have to actively perform separate searches to find the latest tweets containing those specific keywords. With Dashboard’s filters, you can create a customized feed of tweets that include any of your specified keywords and hashtags; you can update these filters as often as you want and even hone your feed to exclude words or phrases you don’t care about.

Free up time by scheduling tweets

Unless you’re like us and perpetually plugged into the digital world, you probably aren’t online at the times when most of your customers are. The ability to schedule your tweets allows you to ensure your message gets out at the best possible time without you having to be online to send it.

Cross-device management allows for immediate response

Perhaps you’ve sold out of a product you were planning to promote, or there’s been a change in brand direction. Or, in the terrible, but unfortunately all too real, scenario of a tragedy or disaster somewhere in the world, it’s appropriate for brands to “go dark” on social media, so as not to come across as insensitive to current events.

While scheduling tweets ahead of time is convenient for those who prefer to “set it and forget it,” unexpected situations can arise in which a scheduled tweet could do more harm than good if it were to go out as planned. Access to Dashboard from your iOS device (and in the future, Android) means you can quickly reschedule or remove tweets before they go out.

Analyze previous tweets to improve future content

A number of our clients depend on us not only to moderate and support their social media communities, but also to create engaging content for their brand. Part of our content creation process includes analyzing performance of previous content

• Do followers seem to reply more positively to tweets with images?
• Have early-morning tweets driven more likes and retweets than mid-day or evening tweets?
• Did use of a specific hashtag help increase impressions?

These are just a few of the many factors we consider when fine-tuning future tweets to make the greatest impact. Dashboard’s analytics give users a rundown of their tweets’ impressions and engagement and how their audience is evolving and engaging. Additionally, integration with Twitter Analytics puts Dashboard users one click away from diving even deeper into the data – details like link clicks, hashtag or profile clicks, media engagements, and more.

Set up your Dashboard

Dashboard is currently in beta and open to all U.S.-based businesses. Have you tried it yet? We’d love to hear your thoughts on it! How are you using it for your business? What features do you love or think should be added? Let us know by commenting below!

Aliza Rosen
Digital Strategist

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