Twitter's Doubling Down on Character Count - Is This a Good Thing?
Made famous by celebs like Ashton Kutcher, Twitter was known for it's microblogging platform, paving the way for other social media sites like Tumblr to images instead of words to post on their blogs or pages in a short amount of time. Since its debut at the South by Southwest festival in 2006, Twitter has been notorious for its 140 character feature. Twitter is used all around the world, in countries like Japan, South Africa and Germany where the languages don't always fit the 140 character mold. Creativity plays a big part in getting messages across Twitter, and emojis have had a huge hand in this, however words still play a huge part in marketing even though video content is slowly taking over. How's this a good thing? I'll explain.
Why is This a Good Thing?
Believe it or not, despite Twitter being slow to change in the last five years, Twitter still has a lot of clout and staying power in social media. From an SEO perspective, Twitter is still one of the highest ranking sites on Google and with 328 million users, it shows no sign of slowing down. By having their platform double its character size, Twitter widens its reach in how much more content users can post. Twitter began beta testing these features in March by not counting usernames as a part of the character count. The truth of the matter is that Twitter will always be used as a worldwide communicative platform and being that, they will need to accommodate to other languages.
What Does This Mean for Your Small Business?
It means that your business can go worldwide! Your small business on Twitter can translate into 280 characters, making it much more accessible to other languages used around the world. Pictures, emojis and video will always dominate Twitter, but customer service can be done quicker, faster and better with 280 character limit. Speaking articulately on Twitter has become a challenge for businesses, but hopefully with the new limit, businesses can now have their brand voice heard in a better light on Twitter.
Need Help?
Keeping up with social media can be difficult when you are worried about the 100 other things about your small business. Let someone else do the work and hire a social media manager like myself. I can keep up with the updates, like this Twitter character limit, post, create content, and report it all back to you. To start a conversation send me an email at Supriya@supriyaprasad.com today!