Despite concerns about its absurdly high pricing, Twitter is moving forward with the rollout of its 'Verification for Organizations' offering, which allows brands to buy a gold checkmark for their main account and verify their employee profiles as affiliates.
Twitter first invited selected businesses to join the programme in January, as part of a larger revamp of verification that aims to both democratise access to checkmarks in the app and create a new revenue stream for the company. As we know very well Social Media Marketing Services are crucail now a days.
More brands in more regions are now being invited to register their interest, which means you might see a lot more gold checkmarks and square profile pictures in your feed soon.
If they're willing to pay the price. Twitter is currently looking to charge businesses $1,000 per month for the option, which appears to be a steep price to pay for a different coloured tick - and not much else.
According to the communications sent to businesses, Verification for Organizations will provide you with the following for your $1,000 monthly investment:
- A gold stamp on your brand account
- Your brand's profile picture should be square.
- An affiliate badge, which is a smaller version of your brand's profile image that is added to the app's approved accounts.
- Affiliates appear on the main brand page, which displays all of the accounts associated with the main brand profile.
- All brand and affiliated accounts have Twitter Blue access.
So you have access to all of the Twitter Blue features for your primary account as well as any profiles you approve as affiliates. However, you must pay for each affiliate you register - if you want to approve your employees and give them both an affiliate marker and a blue tick, you must pay $50 per month for each profile you add.
That appears to be a lot, especially considering you can sign up your brand profile for Twitter Blue for $8 per month and get a regular blue checkmark in the app. Perhaps Twitter will eventually look to restrict brand entities' access to Twitter Blue, but for the time being, you're paying an extra $992 per month for a different coloured tick.
Is it really worth it?
I guess Twitter is hoping that if a critical mass of brands sign up for a gold checkmark, it will become the new gold standard in brand recognition, raising questions about the legitimacy of other brand accounts that don't have that gold tick endorsement. This could compel more brands to join the programme in order to be recognised as the official brand entity in the app.
I'm not sure it'll work, but that appears to be the principle Twitter is following, effectively using the value of exclusivity that was once afforded to the regular blue checkmark to make the new gold tick more desirable, thus increasing interest.
But it's quite a bit. $1000 per month is likely out of reach for most SMBs, and it will be difficult for any brand to justify the expense for so little return.
According to some reports, Twitter is also giving away the gold checkmark to approved ad partners as another way to make it a bigger deal, and this could be another effort to further incentivize take-up by using competitive sensibilities to prompt other brands to want one as well.
Again, I'm not sure if it's the best approach, but Twitter is at least going to test the waters with the option at its current price point.
Verification for Organizations is now available in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, India, Indonesia, and Brazil. Checkout - Best Social Media Marketing Services in India
With a slew of advertisers still refusing to return to Twitter, Elon and company definitely need the extra cash - but do you need the 'benefits' that this programme offers?
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