Recode recently announced Twitter’s plans to strip the iconic 140 character tweet limit. This is set to be replaced with a cap on 10,000 characters instead. Aside from the ability to write more, what changes will marketers have to adapt to in order to market successfully on this platform?
Expandability
Yes, there are times when even the most succinct of us struggle to put our point into 140 characters. Instead of spending ages trying to figure out how you could appropriately rearticulate yourself, you can instead just say it how you wanted to say it – great huh?
Of course that’s not so great for those picking up news or researching, as their aim is to skim over things and pick the most interesting or relevant topics to click on and find out more. With the proposed 10K character limit, it’s thought that Twitter will introduce expandable posts, similar to what already exists in terms of media posts. Rather than opening out a tweet to see a picture, you’ll open it out to find your full tweet text. If implemented, this feature will provide a relief for marketers but also a challenge in terms of creating enticing headlines, encouraging users to expand the tweet and read more.
Long winded customer feedback
This in itself is a double edged sword. At first it may seem positive as it allows for customers to give more informative feedback, with further detailing, allowing you to build a clearer picture of your audience and customer base. However, in contrast to this, it also leaves much more room for information to get lost. With complaints or queries on Twitter, users have to be direct and to the point. The danger with this new extra-long character limit is that information may get lost in longer ramblings or rants. The real challenge here is to be able to skilfully pick out the essential information and process it in just a timely and effective manner as at present.
Site traffic decline
This one depends on whether or not you are putting out regular news and blog content via your website. Many of you will be, as this is not only SEO friendly for Google, but also encourages more traffic to your site, offers a more authoritative online presence and offers potential customers or clients the additional information which they often require to make a purchase decision. If Twitter does expand its tweet capacity to 10K, this may reduce the need for blog posting, or at least mean you post much less frequently, as snippets of news will then be communicated easily on social media.
No longer will users be required to navigate to another platform to find out the news, as they can expand it in front of them. This in turn could reduce the amount of people clicking through from the platform to your website, having a negative impact on traffic. To combat this, marketers will need to develop a balance of Twitter and blog content, and redistribute this across other social platforms appropriately. It could mean developing new, yet still informative ways to attract people to your site.
There’s no proposed introduction date at present for the new Twitter 10k tweet limit, though it’s thought it will be available from as soon as the end of Q1 this year. With that in mind, it’s important to start planning for change now. For more on how to adapt to this change or optimising your social media strategy in general, get in touch with Gordon White or Kyle Murdoch today on 0141 427 0727, or via email at hello@fatbuzz.com.