David Bridges
After testing them out over the past couple of months, Twitter has now officially launched its new ‘Link Spotlight’ feature for US-based Professional Accounts, which enables brands to add a URL, with a variable CTA button, to their profile in the app.
As you can see in this sequence, if you’re in the US, ‘Link Spotlight’ is now available in your professional profile settings, as another feature element to include on your Twitter profile display.
Once selected, you’ll then be able to enter a destination URL, and choose a label for your CTA button.
Your CTA options, at launch, are:
- Book an appointment
- Listen now
- Make a reservation
- Read now
- See now
- Stream live
- View menu
- Watch Now
So obviously, a few of these are targeted towards creators, and guiding profile visitors to check out your content. But the options also provide various referral traffic drivers that could help drive more response for businesses as well.
Once you’ve decided on your CTA message, you can activate your new Link Spotlight on your profile, which will be displayed above your tweet timeline.
Which sounds pretty good, pretty handy, and a good way to drive more traffic from your Twitter presence, right?
Well… there are some provisos that limit what you can do here.
First off, Twitter is only allowing some URLs to be included in the Link Spotlight display, with only 34 domains actually eligible to be included as a click-through option.
Those domains are:
- open.spotify.com
- music.apple.com
- pandora.com
- music.amazon.com
- listen.tidal.com
- deezer.com
- music.youtube.com
- boomplay.com
- play.anghami.com
- napster.com
- soundcloud.com
- bandcamp.com
- mixcloud.com
- toneden.io
- odesli.co
- ticketmaster.com
- bandsintown.com
- substack.com
- youtube.com
- twitch.tv
- vimeo.com
- podcasts.google.com
- podcasts.apple.com
- open.spotify.com/show
- menupages.com
- styleseat.com
- opentable.com
- calendly.com
- etsy.com
- github.com
- kickstarter.com
- indiegogo.com
- grubhub.com
- chownow.com
So there are some handy options in there, including YouTube, Ticketmaster, podcasting platforms, food delivery services, etc.
There are some good options to help drive traffic – but you can’t just chuck in any link that you want. Like, a link to your own website, for example.
You can already include a link to your own site in your main profile options, but the CTA button won’t connect through to your pages specifically, which is a little disappointing.
Why limit which URLs you can link out to?
As per Twitter:
“In order to address technical complexity and trust and safety concerns, we are limiting URLs that can be used with the Link Spotlight to an allowlist. We will consider expanding this list in response to requests from professionals and how the spotlight is being used.”
In other words, Twitter doesn’t want to be sending referral traffic to dodgy spam sites and the like via its shiny new button, so it’s only allowing some URLs to be eligible.
So, I mean, it’s still handy, it’s just a bit different to what you might expect.
As noted, the option is also only available for US-based Professional Account holders at this stage, while the actual CTA messages are also limited to what’s there.
Twitter says that it’ll consider expanding the list of CTA options in future, based on requests from professionals. Custom CTA text, however, is not on the cards, also due to trust and safety considerations.
Even with these restrictions, it could be a valuable option in helping to drive traffic, with that big CTA button standing out, and likely luring more clicks as a result.
And there are some good host sites here that you can link to. Just not yours. Because Twitter doesn’t trust you. Or something like that.
In any event, it’s another consideration for Professional Account managers, who can also add a Location Spotlight, a Shop Module and app links, via dedicated buttons on their profile display.
It could be worth considering – no word from Twitter on when the Link Spotlight will be expanded to all regions.
Mason Thompson
