This week, Twitter doubles down on longer tweets. Also, MailChimp shows it isn’t monkeying around by adding Google Ads; two out of three companies don’t consider their content marketing very successful; and a new study shows that Instagram users actually want to connect with brands.

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The 280-character tweet may change how your brand uses Twitter

Twitter’s announcement that it would begin rolling out tests of 280-character tweets to audiences was met with groans, gasps, smirks, smiles, agitation and anticipation. Though many are passionate about the proposed increased character count, any good content marketer should simply look at this potential change as an opportunity to be evaluated.

So, before you make up your mind about how you feel about the potential of 280-character tweets, first consider the following:

Grammar wins

If your brand prides itself on stellar grammar, then it is likely that Twitter has caused you to relax your standards on occasion in an effort to get a message to fit. This may seem like a minor concern, but if good grammar is important to you, then Twitter allowing you to have a few extra characters to work with so you can add an oxford comma or avoid abbreviating could be a good thing. Your copy editors will be thrilled.

You will have more room to expound

Chances are good that you have published a tweet that doesn’t completely convey the thoughts you want to share because of the 140-character length. With 280-character tweets, you may find it easier to accurately express what your brand wants to share.
Anticipating Impact 280 Character Tweets

During the GeekWire podcast this week, Geek Live Editor Todd Bishop spoke about this.

“Personally, I run into the 140-Twitter limit so much. I’m trying to pack so much into a tweet and trying to tag everybody I want to tag.” Bishop said. “I don’t know, I think [more characters] is good.”

Loss of brevity = loss of audience?

Just as 280 characters give you more room to expound, some argue that it gives you too much room. During this week’s Tech.pinion’s podcast, TECHnalysis Research President and Chief Analyst Bob O’Donnell expressed his concerns.

“It can get long and ramble-y,” O’Donnell said. “Look, I think it can end up deterring people from using Twitter because they are going to be like, ‘It’s too hard to read now’ and they’ll actually start using it less . . . I think it raises some very serious questions about what happens to this platform.”

Anticipating Impact 280 Character Tweets

More expensive?

The math here isn’t that difficult. If Twitter offers more characters, then writers are going to take longer to write a tweet. If writers take longer to write tweets, business owners are going to get fewer tweets for equal work. An increase of 140 characters doesn’t seem like too much when a single tweet is considered, but if your company tweets 20 times a week and each tweet doubles in size, that comes out to nearly 150,000 additional characters per year — and that takes time.

Language-specific Twitter accounts rejoice

In a blog post explaining the reasons for the change, Twitter product manager Aliza Rosen explained that not all languages have been on equal footing when it comes to tweeting:

“In languages like Japanese, Korean and Chinese you can convey about double the amount of information in one character as you can in many other languages, like English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French.”

Language-specific Twitter accounts rejoice

So, if you have accounts in multiple languages, now perhaps is the time that you can get all of these languages on equal footing and be able to share the same messages from each language account.

 

Content Radar: Your Weekly Content News for Freelancers

About 2/3 of companies think that content marketing is not “very successful,”
according to a study recently released by Ascend2 and Vidyard. Of course, companies have differing perspectives about what success is. More than half of respondents said that increasing sales was their most important objective.

Content Radar: Your Weekly Content News for Freelancers

MailChimp has added Google Ads, continuing its evolution from an exclusive email tool to a tool that helps its clients improve all their marketing efforts. MailChimp users now can access Google Remarketing Ads directly from the tool.

Content Radar: Your Weekly Content News for Freelancers

Instagram users actually want to connect with brands on the app. In fact, 4 out of 5 users report that they have voluntarily connected with a brand on Instagram. Instagram’s COO Marne Levine reports that in the last month there have been 180 million interactions with businesses.

Content Radar: Top Weekly Headlines for Content Marketers

eMarketer has lowered its expectations for Snapchat ad revenue for the remainder of 2017 after slower-than-expected new user growth. In March of this year, eMarketer predicted Snapchat would reach $900 million in ad revenue by the end of 2017. Now, eMarketer predicts ad revenue to be just $774 million.