Getting around the 140 character limit
It’s pretty hard to convey any kind of compelling information in 140 characters or less. Twitter therefore relies heavily on abbreviations. It also allows URLs which will take users to web sites where no such limitation exists.
There are services which will shorten URLs to be very small. These can sometimes be reduced to around a dozen characters, where even a short “regular” URL like www.google.com is 14 characters and your company’s URL is most likely substantially longer.
In order to get users to want to click on the URL, you’re still going to have to offer some inducement. That might be the promise of something valuable such as a coupon or special offer, it might be to find out the punchline of a joke or the answer to a mystery… anything you can fit into the 140 character limit.
Most users and companies on Twitter are not especially good at writing interesting tweets. Which would you rather read?
- List of artificial heat sources
- Proteins take bacterial prisoners
Both are short and to the point but the first basically just tells me I can read a list if I follow the link. The second hints that protein, something that I think of as inanimate, takes prisoners. That sounds fascinating!
Just like a newspaper headline has to convince people to buy the whole paper with just a handful of words, your tweets should convince readers to follow the link and read your story.
Click any of the icons below to retweet these passages from the above article.
To get users to click on the URL, you’re still going to have to…
Most users and companies on Twitter aren’t especially good at writing interesting tweets.
Just like a newspaper headline, your tweets must convince people to ‘buy the whole paper’.