Twitter is Testing Its Tweet Length

Does your business have a presence on Twitter? If you are familiar with the platform, you already know one of the key characteristics of Twitter is that it only allows 140 characters per post. This is no longer the case for some Twitter users who are part of a test group that allows them to tweet double the original limit or up to 280 characters.
Currently, Twitter has 328 million users but has been criticized for its inability to attract new users. According to Twitter, the goal for this new feature is to encourage those who did not tweet regularly because they felt constrained by the 140-character limit, to tweet more frequently, and to draw in new users with the expanded character limit.

How Does This Affect Your Marketing Strategy?

If Twitter does decide to roll out the new feature to the rest of its users, this may mean a change in the way your business will tweet. Gaining 140 extra characters means businesses will have the ability to communicate more effectively with their audience. Instead of directing users to a phone number or online help forum for answers, you can provide a useful response to a client’s tweet and have all of your followers see the response at the same time. This will also make your tweets sound more human and conversational.

Gaining 140 extra characters means businesses will have the ability to communicate more effectively with their audience.

While there may be a higher character limit, this does not mean you should overload it with more hashtags per tweet. Research has actually shown that tweets with one or two hashtags have a 21 percent higher engagement rate than those with three or more hashtags.

While a higher character limit may help you get your main message across, do not use your tweets as a mini-landing page. You still want to drive traffic to your website, so if you are including a link, or URL, in your copy, it is important to not let it lost in the text. No matter what the character limit is, it is important to write tweets that are personable, but still concise.
It will be interesting to see what changes Twitter might make to its platform based on this test. If longer Tweets are in our future, rest assured you will be hearing twice as much from us!
11/10/17 Update: This week, Twitter announced they will be expanding the 280-character tweet length to all users. To learn more, check out our blog post Twitter Expands Tweet Length to 280 Characters