Twitter is still a force to be reckoned with in the social media landscape. The platform has seen its fair share of ups and downs in its over a decade of existence. Yet, it has been able to scale those challenges to deliver a social media experience unlike any other.

In addition to popularizing the use of hashtags, Twitter has emerged as a great platform for news, trends and viral content. It's particularly useful as a customer service tool. The rapid engagement that is at the heart of Twitter makes it possible for brands to deliver exceptional customer support.

The number's don't lie. Twitter isn't running out of steam just yet. Its user base has been consistently growing over the past few years. It's expected to grow by a further 2.4% to 322 million in 2021.

A big chunk of that user base is located in the United States, almost 20% to be precise. The United States is the biggest market for Twitter. Evidently, marketers still need to be paying attention to Twitter.

Like other social networks, Twitter regularly makes changes to its offerings and that often requires marketers to adapt and change their strategies. Here are some of the 2021 Twitter changes and how your strategies need to change to get the most out of the microblogging network.

What changes has Twitter made in 2021?

Fleets is no more

Twitter had launched Fleets in late 2020. Like many of its rivals, the company wanted an ephemeral feature as well. Tweets posted to Fleets would disappear automatically after a day. This helped reduce some of the pressure around tweeting that users would have often felt. 

Tweets stick around. They rack up likes and retweets. With Fleets, a tweet could just be a fleeting thought. Fleets were positioned at the top of the timeline in a row of bubbles not unlike how you see Stories in Facebook. 

There was initially a lot of engagement. That’s because most people are so used to browsing Stories on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc that they’d check out the row at the top as if due to just muscle memory alone.

Merely a year after Fleets launched, Twitter announced that it would remove the feature on August 3, 2021. It’s now gone for good.

How to adapt: You may have created a strategy around Fleets, leveraging the ephemeral aspect to push new deals or incentives, for example. That can no longer be done. Since ephemeral tweets are not an option, rely instead on conventional tweets alone as you would have previously. 

Time to get verified for a blue checkmark

The blue checkmark has long been coveted by Twitter users. Not everyone has a verified profile on the social network. It might be a status symbol for some users but for brands, it's an important symbol of authenticity. It helps build trust with consumers.

Twitter had decided at the end of 2017 that it needed to launch a new verification program to improve the process. This was also done to ensure that verified accounts meet its new guidelines. So it stopped accepting new submissions for profile verification. Twitter finally reopened verification submissions in May 2021. 

Initially, the submissions could only be made for accounts belonging to public figures or accounts of high interest in the government, companies, brands and organizations, news organizations and journalists, entertainment, sports and gaming as well as activities, organizers and other influential individuals categories.