Forty-four billion dollars sounds like a large sum, but Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk was willing to shell it out to buy one of the world’s largest social media platforms, with over 556 million monthly active users.
While we’re already seeing his Twitter (now called X) vision come to life, it’s hard to understand where your brand stands or how to benefit from the Elon Musk Twitter takeover. But we’re here to help.
Here’s what you will learn from this post:
1. The X Rebrand and the Rise of (Paid) Blue Checkmark Subscription Service
2. What These Changes Mean for Your Business
3. How Do You Get Verified on Twitter?
4. Tips and Strategies To Maximize the Blue Checkmark
By the end of this blog, you’ll be better equipped to face and navigate the future of Twitter. Let’s start!
The X Rebrand and the Big Blue Checkmark
The most significant change you’ll see on Twitter is this: It’s no longer Twitter, at least in logo and in name. It seems like Musk wanted to let go of the past and embrace the future of Twitter: X. And as the name changes, so does its logo. Instead of the blue bird we’ve known and loved over the past decade, it’s now replaced by an “X.”
Here’s what the platform looks like months after Elon Musk bought Twitter:
Screenshot from X (formerly Twitter)
The rebrand isn’t complete, though, since the domain name is still Twitter. (x.com will also lead you to the social media platform)
Whether the rebrand is good or bad is a matter of preference. But this other change may affect your business and the future of social media marketing in general: blue checkmarks. Once called Twitter Blue, you’ll get these checkmarks once you subscribe to the X Premium subscription service.
There are two types of X Premium services: one for individuals and another for verified organizations.
The Elon Musk Twitter takeover grants several features that most people asked for in the old Twitter through X Premium. For instance, subscribers will have longer posts, can edit their tweets and appear more in the X feed.
Twitter for Business, AKA Verified Organizations, also enjoy some perks by getting verified badges, square icons and badges for personnel.
What This Means for Your Business
The Elon Musk Twitter acquisition brings several changes to Twitter for business.
X Premium for Individuals
If you’re an influencer or a single-person brand, you can benefit from the following X Premium perks:
• Blue Checkmark: Once X verifies your eligibility, you will then have the option to display or hide the blue checkmark.
• Better Posts: You can now post up to 25,000-character tweets. Once posted, you can edit them within one hour.
• Longer Videos: Post up to three hours or a maximum of 8GB file size
• Undo: You’ll have the option to remove a post after sending it before anyone on X can see it.
• Text Formatting: Use bold and italics in your tweets.
• More Visibility in the X Feed: Your posts will be displayed in other users’ dedicated “Verified” tab of other users. All your replies will be prioritized to rank higher in threads, and every post you interact with will receive a minor visibility boost.
• Media Studio: This is a hub for all your uploaded images and videos so you can manage them more efficiently.
Take a look at Taylor Swift’s X account with the verified badge:
Screenshot from Twitter
Other features include:
• SMS Two-Factor Authentication
• Premium Themes
• NFT Profile Pictures
• Custom App Icons and Navigation
• Bookmark Folders
X Premium users will also enjoy fewer ads, a reader mode, a dedicated Spaces tab and group your bookmarks in separate folders.
Twitter for Business/Verified Organizations
Organizations like publications, government offices, non-profits and more have different benefits for their X Premium subscription:
• Blue and Gray Checkmarks: Businesses and non-profits get a gold checkmark. Government and multilateral offices get a gray checkmark. All these organization types will also have a square profile icon.
• Verified Organizations Portal and Affiliations: Add and remove affiliated accounts to your company. Affiliated accounts display a small icon of their organization at the corner of their profile picture as they post, reply and direct message people. However, this feature is only limited to specific industries, such as journalists, sports teams, franchises and a few more.
• Secured Against Impersonations: It’s now harder for malicious elements to pose as your organization since X will monitor accounts for potential impersonation. You can also flag these issues yourself through the X support team.
• All X Premium Benefits for Individuals: Your primary and affiliated accounts will enjoy all Premium benefits for individual users.
Here’s how YouTube, an organization, looks like after getting verified on Twitter for Business:
Screenshot from Twitter
When you hit the search results, you’ll also see some of YouTube’s affiliated organizations also donning the gold checkmark:
Screenshot from Twitter
Is It Any Good?
So are these features after the Elon Musk Twitter takeover great for business? While some say the checkmarks are just for bragging rights, the added customizations, boosted visibility and other features provide more opportunities for brands to stand out.
Accounts like The Cultural Tutor use X Premium to post long-form pieces in their account:
Screenshot from Twitter
See the “Show more” prompt? It’s how you’ll see the rest of the long-form tweet. Long-form tweets can also use more pictures across their post, much like a blog article. These posts have high engagement on Twitter since they’re more likely to be seen, shared and interacted with than an average tweet.
So, yes. After Elon Musk buys Twitter, X has several robust features you can use for your Twitter business strategy.
How Do You Get Verified on Twitter X?
The future of social media marketing on Twitter will be determined by how you effectively use X features, and X Premium has gatekept most of them. So how do you get verified? Here are the Twitter verification processes for individuals and organizations:
Individuals
1. Go to twitter.com, x.com or your X app for iOS or Android.
2. If it’s available, click the “Get Verified” button on the top right corner of your screen. Alternatively, click the “Verified” button on your left-hand dashboard.
3. Select “I am an individual” on the following interface and then click “Subscribe” to proceed with the Twitter verification.
4. Choose between an annual and monthly subscription, and you’re good to go.
Organizations
The Twitter verification process as an organization is similar to X Premium for individuals. However, there are eligibility criteria that you have to go through to get approved, such as:
• Having an active X account, email address and website domain. These assets will be used for authentication and verification purposes.
• For government organizations, your emails and websites must have government top-level domains, such as .gov.
• Your profile must have the most recent profile photo, bio and display name.
If you don’t meet these requirements, you can’t use X Premium for your Twitter marketing strategy. Also, since the Individual plan is more affordable, you can opt to use that plan to still get verified if you’re okay with missing out on the additional features of Verified Organizations.
5 Tips To Maximize X Premium
Twitter for business has become more exciting after the Elon Musk Twitter takeover. With more brands using this tool and paying to be more visible, it’s crucial to know how you can leverage it for your Twitter marketing strategy. Here’s how to do it:
1. Optimize Your Profile
The future of Twitter profiles doesn’t look that much different. You’ll still have a bio, a username, a header, a profile picture, a link and a location
When combined together, these elements help unify your branding on Twitter, helping people understand who you are and what you offer. That’s why filling out these fields is important. You also have creative liberties when filling them out.
Let’s look at Meta’s X account:
Screenshot from Twitter
Since Metaverse is its core strategy for the future, Meta creatively used Metaverse as a location. All their other elements also align with their corporate social media branding so visitors would immediately recognize them.
An optimized profile on Twitter isn’t hard to pull off, but it’s crucial to maintain recognizability and brand equity.
2. Customize Your Tweets
The Elon Musk Twitter acquisition brings big changes in how we share content on the platform. So, don’t limit yourself to 250 characters once you get X Premium.
Instead, use your humongous additional character count to deliver more in-depth tweets. Also, the future of Twitter business strategy looks more alive: you can use different formattings to highlight different sections of your posts. And now that you have larger file size limits for videos and photos, you can create more effective and creative campaigns after the Elon Musk Twitter acquisition.
Add that to the already robust hashtags and advertising features of the platform, you’ll have more opportunities to increase Twitter engagement.
3. Create a Content Calendar
The future of social media still involves scheduling and automating social media management, so content calendars will still stick around even after Elon Musk buys Twitter.
Ensure that you know what content to post on your Twitter profile. After all, you want higher engagement on Twitter, and the only way to do that is to plan and optimize your content ahead of time.
Here’s an example of a Twitter content calendar from Twitter’s team itself:
Image from X (formerly Twitter) Business Blog
Here, you’ll see content ideas that you can use for your Twitter marketing strategy. Sure, it was made during the pre-Elon era, but it’s a good starting point for any brand looking to fill their first month of X Premium content.
4. Work With a Twitter Marketing Agency
The Elon Musk Twitter takeover sounds very daunting, regardless if you’re a Twitter vet who knew the old ways or an X newbie braving the platform.
A Twitter marketing agency makes everything easier for you. They help you identify your audience, run and monitor campaigns and craft and implement a full-service Twitter marketing strategy.
If you need expert consulting to maximize X Premium’s full potential, then working with Twitter agencies makes a lot of sense in the long term.
5. Keep Interacting With Your Network
Any effective Twitter business strategy involves interaction. That’s the whole point of Twitter: engaging conversations, meaningful discourse and building relationships.
Make sure to interact with your network, reply to mentions and converse about your brand. This goes a long way toward increasing organic reach and conversion rates. Plus, it’s a great way of gaining insights from users on what they value and need from your company or product.
Increase Twitter Engagement With Thrive
It’s understandable that brands worry about their revenue and marketing prospects because of the Elon Musk Twitter acquisition. However, knowing Musk’s new policies on X Premium and Verified Organizations gives you a headstart to navigate the future of Twitter… or X.
If keeping up with analytics, policy changes and X trends sounds like too much work, Thrive is here to help. We’re an Internet marketing agency with vast experience helping brands succeed through industry-leading social media tools and practices.
Whether you need someone to handle your creatives, content writing, strategy and marketing, our Thrivers are your go-to experts to get the job done.
Schedule your free proposal, and let’s boost your presence on Twitter X today.
