What Twitter’s New “While you were away…” Means For Brands
On Wednesday, Twitter announced a new feature called “While you were away…”This new addition shows top tweets to less active users that they may have missed while they were away from their Twitter timeline. Like the announcement of most changes to social media networks, many marketers are already down about it and convinced it’s just anther way to make them pay-to-play and screw them out of reaching their audiences. Don’t be so quick to get down on it. Change isn’t bad.
Reading the release, it certainly sounds like a great deal for those that don’t frequent the social network often. They’ll get a look at the best posts from those they follow, without having to scroll back through their timeline to find them. For a brand, this means that your best posts have a chance of being seen by those that wouldn’t have seen them otherwise (do you really think people will scroll back through a week or more of messaging to find the gems?). More potential eyes on your content. Awesome.
So how do you make sure your posts make it into those top tweets? As always, post engaging content. This may seem simple but look at most company Twitter accounts and you’re likely to find mostly boring, self-serving posts with a few truly engaging ones popping up on occasion. It’s time to change that. You need to change your social mindset. You can only afford to post the best, most engaging content (seriously). Only the best content should ever be good enough for your channels and by posting only the best, you have a much better chance of even increasing the reach of your messages with the new “While you were away…” too. Look at the content you’re planning to publish. If it bores you even a little or if you find you’re only interested in it because it’s your job to be, don’t publish it. You can’t afford to.
With changes to the social networks we work with every day comes the need to re-examine how we’re using them and find the best way to adapt for optimal performance. But with those changes also come new opportunities for us to better reach and engage our audiences too. Don’t focus on the bad or how this may hurt your current strategy. Being upset will do nothing to change it (how often do you remember Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter reversing a change they’ve made). Focus on how you can use these changes to give yourself an advantage over your competition and how you can make the best of it. There’s always an upside.
