What do the Changes to Twitter’s 140 Character Limit Mean for Brands?

While Twitter won’t be removing the 140 character limit, the most recent (and planned changes) mean you are no longer hindered as there’s significantly more characters to play with. It means more flexibility, and I would expect, be a breath of fresh air to not only the average tweeter, but brands (and developers) alike.

For brands in particular it means you aren’t, or shouldn’t be, short-changing yourself in your ability to get a desired message across to your audience w/out havin 2 cut corners w/ur wrds. It will give more opportunity to use your creative flare, one would hope.

As reported by Twitter, these new changes mean you get to show more photos, polls, and you can resurface your own content by retweeting or quoting your own content, which as Twitter puts it means you can re-share a tweet if you ‘feel like a really good one went unnoticed’. This is good in some respects, but those with a keen eye may consider this a desperate move by a brand – if your audience didn’t engage with it originally, why would they now just because you’re retweeting your own (old) content?

That is unless you are expanding on the original message to create fresh content that IS engaging (or so you hope). If it is an expansion of your own content it could allow brands to create amplification of a bigger message. By this I mean you can start with a nugget of information about your brand, and over a given period of time develop that nugget into something bigger by being able to tell a story. Positive, or negative…?

Only time will tell, but one thing is for sure, do it too often and your tweets could start to look spammy, therefore accomplishing exactly the opposite to what you wanted to achieve… disengaging your audience.

Although, while Twitter CEO & co-founder Jack Dorsey stated: “We’re focused on making Twitter a whole lot easier and faster”, companies need to tread carefully to ensure they are using these new changes effectively and not to the detriment of their brand or social presence.

By Nick Wheywell