Fadoua Hakimi | @Fakiimii Innovation has come our way. Twitter, everyone’s favorite place to take big ideas and narrow them down to 140 characters or less, has just released a new update for their site and mobile app. The most exciting of the updates is the ability to direct message, or DM, with a group of people. What makes it even better is not everyone in the party has to be following one another.

New! Use Direct Messages to speak privately with a group of up to 20 people. Share Tweets, show emoji & be yourself. https://t.co/8giGhC6OO0

— Twitter (@twitter) January 27, 2015

For businesses, this feature is a great new way to get in touch with a small target audience or a group of your most loyal followers. How could you use direct messaging to do this? Let’s say that your business has a special coupon or offer. Instead of publicly tweeting about it to all of your followers, you could now send it in a DM to your most frequent customers to make them feel special and appreciated. Direct messaging also makes contests on Twitter easier to manage. You can easily select your top 10 entrants and group DM them to let them know the next step to win.

Twitter now also allows you to capture, edit and upload videos that are up to 30 seconds long. It is very simple to use and allows you to share a more in-depth experience of your business’ product or service. Share videos of events or daily goings-on in your business to better connect with your followers.