Twitter’s recent rollout of their “new” Twitter platform was met with yawns by many, but the new Twitter has potential for those looking to enhance their online profiles. In addition to maintaining previous customization features like profile photo spots and varying background design, Twitter now provides a platform for sharing more rich media with customers and potential clients within the Twitter interface. However, taking advantage of the new Twitter for enhancing your online reputation doesn’t give you carte blanche for content sharing. Here are a few tips to ensure that your next move is seen as a positive one.
1. Be Strategic With Video Links
The new Twitter format allows video links to appear in the right hand pane with no need for users to click through to another site to view. This is a handy is a number of ways, but is also invites that thoughtless “must include video” mindset. Just because you can share, doesn’t mean you should.
Knowing that followers are not going to be clicking through on video links anymore, here are two questions to ask yourself before posting up a video to your Twitter feed:
– What’s my point?
– How does this support my brand/my online presence?
If you have an answer for both that makes sense for your Twitter goals, go ahead. Otherwise, don’t contribute to media pollution on the web.
2. Use More High Impact Photos
Along with the use of more video, the new Twitter also allows for in frame photo viewing. This means that your photos appear stripped of their usual context in a photo album or a feature on your website. Without more than a Tweet’s worth surrounding support, your images have to stand alone.
This means that for every photo you are sharing on Twitter in the new format, you need to think through the end user impact. In some cases, one high impact photo will earn a click through to your website or the target site to build traffic and conversation as intended. In others, a lonely photo may simply earn that “Huh?” response from your audience.
Give a more critical eye to each image you post. What kind of response would it elicit in a side pane without context? Is your Tweet enough? What do you need to modify to ensure this picture is still doing for you what you want it to do under the new sharing framework?
3. Get the Hang of #Hashtags
A final tip for the Tweeter in the new Twitter format has to do with #hashtags. You’ve seen them. You’ve used them from time to time. Now that the new Twitter displays related content in the right-hand pane based on them, you need to get the hang of them! Tweets without #hashtags cannot be featured as related content, so remember to include relevant #hashtags with your Tweets to open your content up to new eyes through search and right-hand pane features.
Guest author Brendan Sherton is a technology blogger at E-Mobile Phone Deals, a UK comparison site that offers cheap iphone deals as well as phone guides, reviews, and industry coverage.
Nice post! I had pretty much abandoned the use of hashtags…may have to revisit that strategy….