Twitter Changing their Character Count What Does That Mean for You

By: Eric Hoppe, Ecommerce Manager Rumors have been swirling for years that Twitter would be ditching its 140-character limit, but recent reports indicate that this change is a very real possibility.These sources indicate that Twitter is considering raising the limit to 10,000 characters – about 72 times the length of the current threshold. The Twitter experience has always been defined by the brevity of tweets, which leaves many users wondering: how will this change affect the way businesses and brands use Twitter? Additionally, how will it affect the way consumers use the platform?Change can be hard, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing.Let’s take a look at some potential advantages of a longer character limit. Possible SEO benefits Last year’s Google/Twitter deal gave tweets some prime real estate in the Google search results. It makes sense to assume that longer, richer tweets would fare well in these search results, providing businesses with another powerful way to boost their organic search traffic.The new, meatier tweets can be created to drive readers back to products or content on your site. Opportunities to deliver a more thorough message With the current 140-character limit, it can be challenging to use Twitter to establish thought- leadership or establish real brand awareness.Most businesses rely on a tried-and-true formula: a quick call-to-action followed by a link to some offer or content item.The increased character limit will allow businesses to deliver a far more comprehensive message, and you’ll be able to present this message without making your followers leave the Twitter platform. Fewer, but longer, tweets Over 500 million tweets are sent daily, so it’s no surprise that â€Å"normal† Twitter usage involves popping out a number of short tweets throughout the day.Not every business has the time and resources to keep up with this type of posting schedule.A 10,000-character limit might cause these patterns to shift:longer-form content will start to dot the Twitter landscape, and marketers will need to spend more time crafting these more substantial tweets.This change may lead to an outcome where longer, somewhat less frequent tweets become the norm. You have to wonder why Twitter would be motivated to make a change that’s bound to annoy some of its most loyal users.The company probably wants to broaden its appeal and draw in other social media users who never quite embraced the 140-character limit.With a surge of new users, you could end up with plenty of fresh eyeballs for your content.The key to success with this wider audience will be to understand who they are and what’s important to them. Better analytics Twitter’s current set of analytics provides users with the number of impressions for each tweet, as well as the total engagement received by a tweet.You can break down these figures to see exactly what kind of engagement has been happening such as retweets, likes, follows, replies and much more.While this data is pretty rich on its own, it can only get better if Twitter sees a shift toward longer-form content.Users may eventually be able to see how much total time was spent engaging with a particular tweet, or they may have the chance to learn how far down a user scrolled within a longer tweet’s content.More in-depth analytics information could make Twitter a more powerful marketing tool for your business. Summing it up It’s clear that an increased character limit carries some exciting possibilities for Twitter, but it’s probably best to remain cautiously optimistic for the time being.Longer tweets may transform Twitter into an even better content marketing platform, but these changes may also result in more spam and clutter in the Twitterverse.Only time will tell if a 10,000-character limit will enhance or detract from the overall Twitter experience.