Twitter's 280 Characters and Business Accounts

Twice the room, from yesterday

Since yesterday most Twitter accounts can post up to 280 characters, double the old limit. The change follows a test with a smaller group of accounts that began in late September.

Japanese, Chinese and Korean stay at 140, since those languages already fit more meaning into each character.

For a business the change is mostly good news. The squeezed tweet, with vowels dropped, half a sentence and a link, is no longer necessary.

The risk is the opposite one: tweets that grow to fill the space, in a feed people still scroll through quickly.

What the room is for

• A complete sentence instead of a fragment with the vowels removed.
• The link and a reason to tap it.
• The name of a partner or customer, credited properly.
• A useful detail: the date, the time, the address.
• Two languages in one tweet rather than two tweets.
• A full answer to a customer's question, in public.

The fifth is the one that changes most for a Canadian business. A short message in English and French now fits in one tweet, which halves the posting without leaving either language out.

What has not changed

People still skim. A timeline moves fast, and a tweet is judged on its opening words the way a headline is judged before the article.

A link still counts as 23 characters however long the address, and photos do not count at all, so the extra room is all for words.

And nothing about the change makes people more interested in a business's tweets. A longer post that says nothing is just a longer interruption.

Resisting the urge to fill it

Twitter said that people in its test filled the space at first, for the novelty, and then went back to mostly short tweets.

That is the right instinct for a business. Write the tweet as short as it can be while still saying the thing completely, then stop.

If a tweet needs all 280 characters, ask whether it is really two tweets, or a blog post with a tweet pointing to it.

And put the point at the start, where a scrolling reader catches it.

Sentences rather than code

The old limit produced a dialect: ampersands, numbers in place of words, hashtags standing in for sentences. It made business accounts look rushed.

Write normally now. A tweet that reads like a sentence from a person, with full words and ordinary punctuation, reads as more careful than one that reads like a classified ad.

Keep hashtags to one or two that people actually follow, at the end, rather than a string of them used as decoration.

Replies to customers

Customer questions on Twitter often got a reply asking the person to send a direct message, because the answer would not fit.

Now most answers do. Answering in public, in one complete reply, shows other followers that questions here get answered.

Anything involving an order number, an address or personal details still belongs in a private message.

A worked example

A translation agency with a small office downtown used Twitter for short notes in English and French: a language newly offered, a holiday in a client's market, a word that does not translate well.

Under the old limit each item went out twice, once in each language, an hour apart. Followers saw everything twice, and replies were split between the two.

When the limit doubled yesterday, the first draft of a combined tweet used every one of the 280 characters: two long sentences in each language and three hashtags.

It was rewritten before posting: one sentence in English, the same in French, one link and one hashtag, at a little over half the limit.

The agency will now post each item once. Notes that need a third language still go out on their own.

Two languages, one tweet

A bilingual tweet works when both halves are complete and parallel: the same facts in the same order, so a reader of either language gets the whole message.

Put the language most of your followers read first, and use one link for both halves rather than one each.

Have the second half written by someone fluent rather than a translation tool. A clumsy sentence is more visible sitting beside a polished one.

Checking what works

Twitter's own analytics shows impressions and engagements for every tweet, free, for any account.

After a month at the new length, compare longer tweets with shorter ones on similar subjects: which were read, clicked and replied to.

If the long ones do no better, the short ones were already enough.

The pinned tweet and the scheduled ones

The tweet pinned to the top of the profile is the one new visitors read first. With the extra room it can say what you offer, in which area, and how people reach you, in plain sentences with a link.

Rewrite it this week if it still reads like a telegram.

Tools that schedule tweets, or copy posts automatically from another network, may still cut text at the old limit until they are updated. Check the next few scheduled posts before assuming the new limit applies everywhere.

The counter-case

Some businesses will genuinely need the room: an event with a date, time, venue and ticket link, or a service notice that has to be complete in one post.

And an account that rarely tweets will not be changed much by any of this. The limit matters most to those who post often.

But the length is a ceiling, not a target. Say the thing completely, as briefly as it can be said, and stop.

For the next tweet

1. Write the point first, in one sentence.
2. Use full words and normal punctuation.
3. Add the link and a reason to tap it.
4. Credit people by their Twitter names.
5. Combine languages where one tweet now fits both.
6. Stop well short of the limit when you can.
7. Compare results in Twitter's analytics after a month.

Step one decides whether the rest gets read. The extra room helps a tweet that starts with its point, and does nothing for one that makes the reader wait.

Checking which posts actually reach people, on the network most businesses use more, is covered in Facebook Page Insights for an owner with ten minutes.

Frequently asked questions

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