Everything you need to know about Twitter’s 140 character update

Twitter has made a big change to the way tweets work: longer tweets are here!

Last month, Twitter cut back on what types of content will use its 140-character limit. Now, media attachments (e.g. photos, videos, GIFs and polls), quoted Tweets and @names in replies are no longer counted against the 140 characters that make up a tweet. This means people can attach media to tweets without sacrificing characters, and it’s made public conversations a lot easier.

Full details on what’s changed

• Media attachments: A URL at the end of Tweets is created from attaching media files, and will not count towards the character limit (the URLs in the Tweet will be counted towards the character limit as they do today).
• Replies: When replying to a Tweet, @names won’t count towards the 140-character count (this update is yet to be rolled out).
• Retweet and Quote Tweet yourself: You can now Retweet or Quote Tweet yourself if you feel like a good post went unnoticed.
• No more “.@username”: New Tweets that begin with a username will now reach all your followers (meaning you will no longer have to put the “.” before the “@username”, which is what people had been doing to broadcast Tweets broadly.

4 ways to make use of Twitter’s 140 characters

1. Provide more context in replies

One great benefit of this update is that @names will no longer count against your characters. This opens up more space to provide additional text that might have taken a couple of tweets previously. If you’re responding to a customer query, you could share your reply in 140 characters but also add a GIF or image saying “Thank you for contacting us”.

2. Use visuals more often

Studies show that visual and media attachments on tweets are a great factor in boosting engagement and retweets. One study by Twitter found that photos average a 35% boost in retweets and videos get a 28% boost.

It has been hard to convey your message in your tweet text in 140 characters when also including a media attachment. But now, Twitter users can utilize the full 140 characters and still include media. For business owners and marketers, this means more opportunity to include stunning visuals, product demo videos, and more.

3. Quote yourself to share longer thoughts

It’s common to break up a tweet into a couple of sections to completely elaborate and share thoughts. But with Twitter’s quote option, you can share two tweets that are intertwined and easy to follow – meaning users won’t have to visit your profile or scroll through their timeline to see the first part of your tweet.

How does this work? Just post your first tweet, and then quote that tweet and add the rest of your message in the 140 characters available to you in the second tweet.

4. Opportunity for better conversation

Twitter is all about conversing and connecting with others. One of the biggest factors in this update is that we can fully embrace the 140 characters available to us, giving us the opportunity for better conversation.

At Belluber we have set up and run Twitter profiles for lots of different types of companies. If you’d like to find out more on how we can help your business, get in touch.

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