01 Apr What You Need to Know About the New Twitter Photo Features
With rumors that Twitter is getting rid of hashtags and @replies, the micro-blogging platform has been making the rounds in the news lately. However, it’s the recent announcement that Twitter photos “just got more social” that has our team at Ignite Social Media thinking of ways that we can use these changes to our clients’ advantage.
Here’s an overview of the changes and how can community managers incorporate them into social content.
Tag People in Twitter Photos
Much like Facebook, Twitter users can now tag people in photos. You can tag up to 10 people in a photo – as long as their privacy settings allow – and those users will get a notification that they’ve been tagged. And, this doesn’t impact character count outside of the standard limit placed whenever you add a photo.
What This Means for Brands
Not only can you tag users to give credit for any UGC that you’re sharing, but you can, for example, also use tagging as a way to acknowledge followers by tagging your most engaged followers for the last week. There’s also potential to tag other brands and accounts (if an option, per your legal guidelines) in photos, giving these users direct notifications and perhaps prompting them to engage with you and your brand.
If you’re going to allow your brand’s handle to be tagged in photos, keep in mind that there’s a chance that users can tag your profile in spam or inappropriate images. You can easily remove a tag – and your brand’s association with this content – by selecting ‘Remove tag from photo’ in the tweet’s detail menu.
Share Multiple Photos in a Single Tweet
Twitter also now allows users to post multiple photos in a single tweet. Whereas you could only upload one image before, you can now share up to 4 photos per tweet without additional character limit consequences.
What This Means for Brands
AdAge looked at some of the brands experimenting with new photo collages on Twitter. From Meow Mix to GE, brands are using this additional visual real estate to tell stories and share information beyond standard character limits. Now that photo previews are viewable within the Twitter stream, this provides a great opportunity for brands to include unique calls to action within their visuals.
True brilliance is remembered by its effect on people, not things. pic.twitter.com/wQjjNEF2nH
— General Electric (@generalelectric) March 28, 2014
So far, I haven’t seen many other brands playing around with these new features, as they’re limited to mobile apps for now. If and when this functionality rolls out to desktop and the Twitter API, I imagine we’ll see more brand tweets featuring tagged users and photo collages.
Have you experimented with Twitter’s new photo capabilities? Tell us what you think in the comments below.