Twitter has always been a sort of addiction. The constant stream of news nuggets and content makes is hard to look away sometimes. In a way, that’s the beauty of the platform keeping things short and sweet keeps your eyes on the feed. Change seems to be on the way, though, and it could have massive implications for us in the content game.
Twitter might be changing soon, we’ll help make sure you change with it.
According to recent reports, Twitter has been looking at going past its 140-character limit and offering a product that let’s users put longform text directly on the platform.
Winds of Change
Weird right? The 140 limit is essentially what made Twitter stand out among social networks, and whether the addition of longform is subtle or direct it just feels strange thinking about it.
One must ask, am I really on Twitter to read articles directly off my feed? The beauty was you could chose what you wanted to read simply by sharing links but would it have the same effect if it’s plopped right on your feed?
For marketers, the character limit really helped brands find their voice and stand out from the crowd. With so little real estate to work with you have to be clever and economical with your words. It essentially forced you to be creative, simply putting a link in a tweet just isn’t enough in the Twitter-verse.
Changing With The Game
Depending on how it’s implemented these longerform tweets can driver users away. Nobody wants to feel forced to read something, especially if it gets in the way of your constantly updated news feed. Twitter is unique in that it’s in real-time slowing down the feed with longer tweets could kill the vibe.
It’s still too early to tell, though, whether this will work. From a marketing standpoint you have to be prepared for whatever happens and when Tweets get longer we’ll all have to adjust.
Some things to keep in mind: it’s ok to reuse content, but don’t dump everything out there as soon as you can. There’s enough noise on the internet already. Work to tailor the content for the platform. Even if you can tweet more that 140 characters doesn’t mean you have to, go more in-depth but don’t go overboard or your risk losing interest.
Lastly, don’t let the conversation end there. The idea behind Twitter’s mover toward longer tweets is to keep people on their site longer. That’s all well and good, but you have to make sure the conversations on your brand don’t end there, always link back to your site and encourage readers to continue interaction with you.
Change can be scary, but nothing on the internet stays the same forever. Here at Imagine It Studios we focus on keeping you on that cutting edge of the digital world, and as social media evolves we evolve with it. If you want to learn more about what we can offer you, drop us a note or give us a call at 956.687.1521.