Last week Twitter updated user timelines to show previews of Twitter pictures and Vine videos right there within the tweet, making the experience of scrolling through your Twitter stream more visual. Clicking or tapping on the preview will bring you to a full version of it.
Not only that, but using the mobile version, now you can also reply to, retweet, and favorite tweets without having to expand the tweet by tapping on the icons within the tweet on your Timeline.
That’s all well and good, but what does that mean for marketing?
Well, first, it’s another opportunity for you to make your posts stand out to catch a potential customer’s eye. Everyone knows that visuals are a huge part of marketing, and can be the difference between being engaged with or being ignored (ouch). Now you can up your chances of having the former happen instead of the latter, especially on a platform that has traditionally been based on text. Many brands have already begun tweeting more visuals, knowing they’ll definitely be seen by their followers, even if they’re not clicked on.
Above are a perfect examples of how attractive this new update can make your tweets, provided you take advantage of it. You can create banners for events, show off the cover of your newest whitepapers, share photos from your office or events, and put your products on display. Tweets with images attached already had the advantage over plain text tweets, with the image tweets receiving 91% more retweets and favorites. You can expect your engagement to soar even higher now that those visuals are always visible.
Granted, there are still a few kinks to work out. On mobile, some of the photos can be cropped and if images are not optimized, information may be lost, but hopefully, given some time, the developers will patch that up.
The second thing about this Twitter update that marketers should note is that the ease with which users can now favorite and retweet posts on mobile should drive up those actions. Remember that the mechanics remain the same for desktop users though.
These changes will have already sparked a shift in the tweeting strategies of businesses, towards the inclusion of visuals in their tweets. From now on, it will likely become commonplace to draw attention to the most important of your tweets with pictures and videos. Real success will depend on which brands will come up with the most innovative way to use their visuals to connect with their followers.
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