Every newbie on twitter always asks how people are able to hack this social application. Twitter always has its own standards. One cannot behave in the same way they do on other social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and LinkedIn. There is a bit of sophistication required to be on top of your Twitter game.
This social media application is also a micro-blogging platform. It may offer fewer words than other applications, but knowing how to hack it is key. Being boring will not be able to gain you readership. More so when you have something important to share. Someone else may share your content or the same views, but because of how they have structured their tweet/s they get more retweets, likes and followers.
In other instances, you may have fewer followers but that one tweet could end up having retweets more than the number of followers you have. This has been observed in many instances.
So, how do you make your Twitter Feed always interesting!
Use GIFs
A gif (Graphical Interchange Format) or a Jif, is a lossless format for image files that supports both animated and static images and was named the 2012 Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year. With twitter’s 280 characters per tweet, an image will speak louder than just plain written words. This will always capture the short attention span we have and a user may just retweet or like your tweet just because of the GIF. Unlike videos, with Gifs, there is no need to press play since they appear as continuous loops.
In 2017 alone, when Twitter had already rolled out a search engine for Gifs in 2016, over 100 million GIFs were shared across the platform. This indicates how important Gifs are for your personal brand or profile and even corporate profiles. Do not be afraid to use them you only need to ensure the Gif marches your tweet or comment appropriately. Gifs also show you are keeping up with the latest trends. Giphy offers an amazing pool of gifs to choose from.
Use memes
The dictionary format of a meme is “an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by Internet users, often with slight variations”.
We all have seen this; an image with a popular personality having written words on the image signifying a certain emotion. This has also been used for animals, especially cats and dogs as well as cartoon characters. Memes are used to signify certain emotions and are used to bring out the context of a tweet or comment. One can always get relatable memes to use at Know Your Meme.
Share Images and videos
Images and videos are always eye-catching. Users will find it more interesting to follow you when you have an image embedded in your tweet. The image or video will speak more and even go further than a user even reading the actual tweet.
Threads are amazing
A thread on Twitter is where a person creates a tweet but replies (threads) in the same comment section with a story or information to share. The increase of Twitter characters from 140 to 280 has enabled users to share more of their views on this platform with threads, you can choose to have every tweet with a Gif, Meme, Image or Video. This will make the thread even more interesting.
Use hashtags (#)
A hashtag is a simple way to categorise a tweet topic. It is called a hashtag because the “#” symbol is referred to as a “hash” symbol in some places. As a user, you can create any hashtag to correlate with your tweet. Brands use it to signify a particular product or event in their organisation such as #BakeAwards. Hashtags also come up when a discussion arises such as #PayInfluencerske.
As a Twitter user, one is advised not to ‘Hashtag hijack’. This happens when you pick a trending hashtag and add it to your tweet but the tweet is not related to the hashtag. This is often seen when a person is selling a product using the latest trending hashtag.