The Definitive Guide To Getting The Most Out Of Organic Reach On Twitter

It’s All in the Crazy, Detailed Twitter Details

By Niclas Hulting

Twitter has been around for nine years now. So less than a decade ago, this little symbol — # — was known as the pound sign, number sign or just the hash mark.

Today, it is universally known as the hashtag. That’s quite a remarkable transformation for a symbol (we assume that the hashtag had a really, really good marketing agency behind this rebranding).

Nowadays the hashtag is part of popular culture. You can’t watch TV without seeing a hashtag prominently displayed. It has gone mainstream and is part of everyday life. It has transcended mediums in record time.

But, as it stands with almost any new tool, feature, medium or channel, it took awhile for us to figure out how to use it properly.

For this blog post, we are showing you the components that make up Twitter and how to harness every little crazy detail about it to your (or your brand’s) advantage.

What Can You Do on Twitter?

You can share your thoughts in a tweet that can include hashtags, links, images and location tagging. The main premise of Twitter is to share short, succinct messages, hence the 140-character limit. It’s a microblog that caters to a higher volume (or “cadence,” if you want to buzzword it up a notch) of content posts than channels like Facebook and LinkedIn.

What Are My Twitter Copy Restrictions?

You’re limited to 140 characters for each tweet. If you’re direct messaging someone, you can now use long-form copy. This is kind of a big deal for brands running customer service on Twitter.

The ideal tweet has a length of between 71 and 100 characters.

But just because you’re limited to 140 characters doesn’t mean that you have 140 characters to play with. If you want to optimize your organic reach, you should limit your copy to fewer than 95 characters. This will allow you to attach an image and a CTA link.

Character/copy restrictions:

• 140 characters
• 118 characters + link (link takes 22 characters, or 23 for HTTPS)
• 117 characters + image (image takes 23 characters)
• 95 characters + image + link (image takes 23, link takes 22, or 23 for HTTPS)

What About Imagery?

Twitter has built-in filters a la Instagram. It has a 3MB limit to image sizes and GIFs are awesomely integrated. Video is integrated with most video sites, such as YouTube and Vimeo. There is native direct sharing from the Vine app.

Tweets using an image are 94 percent more likely to get retweeted.

More nerdy image directions:

• For a full image in tweet preview, use 2:1 aspect ratio (i.e., 1024 x 512).
• You can have a max of four images per tweet.

What’s Tagging and How Is It Used?

You can tag up to 10 people (Twitter handles) in a photo without affecting the character count. This is sweet. You should tag people. After all, for every handle you tag, you’re introducing your content to a different user and maybe his/her/its community. You can also add location data to your tweets. Locations are directly integrated with Foursquare’s platform. Giving location-specific data is a good way to give additional context or location-specific info.

Tweets with one or more hashtags are 55 percent more likely to be retweeted.

How Do I Use Hashtags?

Aim for two hashtags per tweet (that’s the optimal number). Hashtags are publicly searchable and can be used to add context, voice or campaign filtering. You can’t hashtag numbers or special characters, only a–z or A to Z.

When you use more than two hashtags, your engagement actually drops by an average of 17 percent.

How Do I Interact on Twitter?

Sure, you can follow and unfollow people. You can browse timelines and discover users through the native app experience. But you’ll be spending most of your time on the timeline (“Home” on the app) and the Notifications tab.

• @reply: Reply to other Twitter account. Can be seen only by accounts following both parties: the reply-er and reply-ee. Oftentimes users will add a period in front of the “@reply” to share with all of their followers (e.g., “.@brittonmdg Great job!”).
• Favorite: The Twitter equivalent of the Facebook “like.” A digital nod of approval.
• Retweet: Sharing a tweet. The first form of discovery and sharing on Twitter.
• Quote Tweet: The quote tweet adds context, changes or a modification to an existing tweet. It’s a way to share a tweet while adding something to it (flair, facts, context, info). Recently Twitter altered the quote tweet feature — in a good way. You can now use the quote tweet feature to add content without losing character count. It’s a great way to add more context, voice and facts to a tweet.
• Direct Message: Private messaging on Twitter. Done by omitting the “@” and adding a “d” in front of the account name (e.g., sending DM to @brittonmdg would be: “d brittonmdg message …”). This used to be restricted to a 140-character count as well, but a recent change has removed that limitation.
• Pin Tweet: You can pin a tweet to the top of your timeline so it’s the first thing people see.

What Did I Miss?

There’s also a thing called Twitter Cards. I won’t go into specific detail, but they allow you to structure your content you share a little differently than the regular experience. If you want to know more about them, here’s a good place to start.

Of course there are also Twitter ads. Oh, and Twitter analytics. And maybe something new by the time this blog is published.

Why Twitter?

Twitter is fun. It’s instant. It’s fast. But it can also be a really wonderful tool when building a community and cultivating an audience. So if you’re not already on Twitter, go ahead and jump in. Hopefully this blog will help you make the plunge a nice dive instead of a belly flop.

References: Twitter Media, AdWeek, Buffer, InnovationToProfits.com,ReviewzNTips.com and Twitter Support

Photos: Shutterstock