Twitter’s New Character Count – So What?

The day has finally arrived. After years of being forced to fit everything you want to say into a mere 140 characters, Twitter has doubled its character count to 280 (feel free to check our math on that, Mr. Zuckerberg).

The question is… should you take advantage of this increased character count? You may be enticed to run straight to your phone and start composing all those long tweets you’ve been bottling up for so long, but there are a few factors to consider. Here are a few questions you should ask yourself:

Have 140 Characters Been Enough For You in the Past?

Many companies have used Twitter’s low character limit to great effect. Just because you have access to more characters than before doesn’t mean you should necessarily use them. After all, many modern cars have a speedometer capable of going up to 120 mph and above, and few people dare to utilize that. While you’re not going to get thrown in the slammer for pushing Twitter’s character count, if you’ve been using 140 characters without the need to write a “part two” of a specific tweet, then you may be better off just sticking to what you’ve already been doing.

Have You Struggled to Fit Everything In a Single Tweet?

Some people – and companies – have more to say than others. While it’s probably not advisable for a company to go on a lengthy rant on any social media platform, there are probably times when you’ve felt restricted by Twitter’s (now old) 140-character limit. If you’ve found yourself splitting one thought into multiple tweets on a regular basis, then taking advantage of the extra characters could work out well for you. That being said, you might want to restrict these longer tweets to special occasions when you really have something important to say.

Do Your Customers Seem to Prefer Brevity?

We live in the land and era of TL;DR (too long; didn’t read). This is especially true when it comes to social media. People clearly love getting tweets, but you really have to wonder if the reason why Twitter is so popular is because the character count is low rather than despite of it. This comes down to more of a judgment call of sorts. If it seems that your customers respond better when your word count is kept at a minimum, then it may be a good idea to continue using Twitter in the same way as before.

Do You Use Multiple Social Media Platforms For the Same Post?

Any good business knows that limiting your social media posts to a single platform is never a good idea. You don’t want to go too crazy, but posting to two or three platforms at once will do a great job in expanding your reach. The problem in the past has been that if you’re posting to Facebook and Twitter, for example, then you must either choose to keep your Facebook post as short as the one going to Twitter or edit down the character count only for the Twitter post. Twitter’s new 280-character capability gives you a greater amount of flexibility, which should prevent these issues from occurring in the future, even if you’re not consciously aware of writing more words than usual.

As we’ve seen, the world of social media marketing changes on a regular basis. We’re here to keep up with all the trends so that you don’t have to. Feel free to give us a shout when you get a chance and we’ll show you what we could do for your business.