Why Twitter is Humanizing Direct Messaging

This week Twitter announced the introduction of custom profiles for direct messages between brands and people. This will allow brands to put the friendly human faces of the people behind the account in front of the customer. Just one of many moves being made by companies in humanizing direct messaging by standing out from the clutter of artificial intelligence and bots.

The announcement comes in the wake of research where VentureBeat reports that 80% of site visitors never use chatbots. All brand building begins with a human to human conversation and as the world has predominantly shifted its approach towards a faceless organization behind a screen, to stand out companies can start using Twitter's humanizing direct messaging tool to raise the stakes in customer query interactions as well as after sales service.

Human interactions encourage a product feedback loop, which often leaves much unsaid in conversations with machines.

In a researched paper published last year titled "Is it What You Say or How You Say it? How Content Characteristics Affect Consumer Engagement with Brands on Facebook", academics from the Said Business School found that relatively little is known about the core brand personality of the voice speaking for various brands online. This has been chalked up to tactical influencer marketing approaches that lack a consistent voice. The researchers found that persuasive language that inclined towards selling had a weak impact in driving customer results but an educational approach had more of an effect and was visible in later conversations.

Twitter's new feature for humanizing direct messaging is a welcome change for brands to stand out in the conversation as human first and possibly help build bonds between the human rep and the human customer. We recommend that marketers match the voice and personality of the brands they represent with the natural tone of internal and agency representatives as the core community managers leading human first initiatives such as this one.

An article published here last week titled "Why Valentine’s Day Isn’t For Every Brand" could also serve as a guide as to whether the social platform is a match to your brand.