3 Impacts of Twitter's new, longer tweets to Online Retailers and Brands

Twitter is the best social media platform for your business and you might not know it yet. Here's why.

Some changes are happening, and it will impact how you're using the platform so far.

According to [the Verge](http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/12/12891562/twitter-tweets-140-characters-expand-photos/" target="_blank), Twitter "will cut down on exactly which types of content count toward the platform's 140-character limit. Media attachments (images, GIFs, videos, polls, etc.) and quoted tweets will no longer reduce the count. The extra room for text will give users more flexibility in composing their messages."

It's coming September 19th.

In other words, you will now have more freedom to engage with your audience, drive them to your website and convert them. It will allow you to interact deeper with your audience, search for more relevant conversations around your brand, and step up your storytelling game!

Read on.

Better interactions with your followers... and potential ones

Now that you have more characters for tweeting at users and less constraints with images, videos or GIFs, it's your time to be creative and bring value to your audience.

This post from [Buffer](https://blog.bufferapp.com/the-power-of-twitters-new-expanded-images-and-how-to-make-the-most-of-it/" target="_Blank) shows that:

• Tweets with images receive 18% more clicks than those without
• Tweets with images receive 89% more "️" than those without
• Tweets with images receive 150% more RTs than those without

Source: [Buffer](http://bufferapp.com" target="_blank)

Whenever you interact with someone, whether you reply from an angry tweet, or thank another one who's loving your product, there are tons of ways to delight.

You'd be amazed at how surprised your audience will be when you reply to them with a funny image, or a GIF. They'll retweet to their friends, or talk about you in positive words.

It might even lead to an epic story like this [one](https://blog.aftership.com/hacks-ecommerce-win-customers/" target="_blank).

When you want to promote a blog post, or even the content from another publication, images, or GIFs should come along. It takes more time to prepare still it helps you stand out among the crowd and build your Twitter profile.

More conversations to jump into

One of the most underrated function of Twitter is "Search".

More room for words mean that conversations on Twitter will be better. Finding relevant content related to your business will be easier. To do so, here's how you can proceed:

• Go to Twitter > [Advanced Searched](https://twitter.com/search-advanced?lang=en" target="blank)
• Select the different criterions you need
• Hit "Search"

Say you sell accessories for dogs. Or yoga pants. You can find people tweeting about related topics and study what they have to say online. Many will complain, some will comment on specific topics. The more important here is you can start grabbing people's pulse.

If you need to go deeper and 'geolocalise' users on Twitter with the specific longitude and lattitude of where they are tweeting from.

Sounds a bit creepy right? 🤔

Still, imagine your products might appeal to a certain demographic who will be at a specific event—music or yoga festival, or whathever—and you know where that event is. You can check out on Twitter what's the discussion like and jump into conversations while soft-selling your brand.

Another alternative is to use [Tweetdeck](https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/" target="_blank). It's free, and perfect for the search function.

Tweetdeck allows you to open different search windows in the same time and display them like a real-time dashboard. See an example below.

We've selected users tweeting from and around the Eiffel Tower (with a circumference of 1 kilometre). Here's how to do it:

• Find the geocode of the place you want to select. In our case with the Eiffel Tower, we have the address: 5 Avenue Anatole France, 75007 Paris, France
• Go to http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/geocode and enter this data
• Now you have the latitude and longitude: 48.8588871, 2.2944861
• Go to Twitter, or Tweetdeck and in the Search field, input 'geocode:48.8588871,2.2944861,1km (note that even with several kilometres, you should always input km as it is)
• You will now see the tweets from people tweeting around the Eiffel Tower.

And voilà!

Better storytelling

Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO claimed that the 140-character limitation is a "beautiful constraint". We know constraints are great for creativity. When you have limits, you tend to think out-of-the-box. The 140 characters though sometimes can be a tricky, especially with the visual, polls, GIFs and on you want to add to encourage interaction.

The new and longer tweets are perfect for you if you want to add a mix of beautiful words, images, or videos to powerful messages. Or simply be creative. A great example is [innocents drinks](https://twitter.com/innocent" target="_blank).

Ifyoudon'tputspacesbetweenanyofyourwordsitgivesyoualotmorecharacterstosellyoursmootjiesbutthere'snospellchecksoit'sariskymarketinggtactic.

— innocent drinks (@innocent) September 8, 2016

Great storytelling on Twitter is all about highlighting changes. Stories are not static. They adapt. They feature one character, even better, one hero who's struggling and achieving something.

Something unexpected happen and suddenly, everybody's tweeting about it. Remember this from Oreo? It happened during Super Bowl XLVII's now infamous blackout:

Power out? No problem. pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC

— Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013

Over to you

Twitter's future change will center around the message itself and not the media attached to it. What will you do with it? Whether on and out of Twitter, it doesn't matter. You can use tweets as cards and display them on your website, on your blog post, and improve their conversion rates while increasing your following.