Twitter Moments Just Got Better For Influencer Marketing

Just six months ago, Twitter tried to consolidate the breadth of their always-on network of information into Moments. By curating top tweets into trending topics directly, the platform hoped to make itself more accessible to casual social media users. Growth has been anemic at the network, which can only report about 120 million daily users. Despite a large base of registered users, its active user numbers have been quickly dwarfed by other short-form social platforms like Snapchat (200 million) and Instagram (400 million). Moments was supposed to help and it was rolled out with much fanfare.

Unfortunately, Moments removed a critical component from Twitter’s appeal. Tweets curated by the company into a Moment were stripped of their obvious external links. More often than not, Twitter is used in content and influencer marketing to amplify work found on other networks or directly to the creator’s website. In an effort to keep reader ‘in the Moment’ they are exploring, Twitter removed direct links that would send them off the platform. With a few extra clicks, users could get to the original content but increasing that friction would not help traffic flow to brand, publisher or creator sites.

Moments essentially follow the same path as Facebook Instant Articles by trying to keep users within a walled garden. Unfortunately, a 140-character tweet isn’t always a full experience like the publisher-provided Instant Articles. Without that cooperation from publishers and by blocking regular users from actually getting to the contact they discovered, Twitter Moments seemed to lack what either side of the equation needed. Content creators who are relying on those clicks coming in from social to drive conversions as well as show display and native ads alike complained to Twitter. Many users simply didn’t pay much attention to Moments, some hated it and others were just annoyed that it kept telling them it had updates.

Twitter’s response was announced this week and it should help users and content creators alike. Users can now ‘dive deeper’ into publisher content before they come back to the Moment they were browsing. Andrew Fitzgerald of Twitter explains how it works on their blog, “You can tap a link to a news article, blog, recipe, and more — directly from a Moment. When you’re done browsing, simply click out and jump back into the Moment where you’ve left off.”

In essence, the user bypasses the original tweet and is pushed directly to the content link, giving them a chance to explore the creator’s work, see their ads and maybe buy something. With a click outside the frame, the user is back in the Moment again and can continue to explore the curated tweets Twitter has selected for them.

How Does This Impact Influencer Marketing

Twitter is an excellent way to amplify content created on other channels and Moments, like hashtags, assist in discovery. This change to allow direct access to the original content is helpful to content creators and users alike. Yet, creators, brands and publishers creating content amplified to Twitter have a few more items to consider:

• Will the Moment frame effectively display my content?
• Can my content provide enough information on the subject that the user doesn’t feel the need to keep exploring the Moment?
• Can I build a compelling path to my site within my content so users can reach additional pages?

While these are extra points to consider during composition, marketers and influencers that make effective use of the way Moments work will have an advantage over other tweets curated into the stream. This kind of channel specialty is also one of the reasons that working with influencers is so effective. Influencers know their platforms and devour changes in social media, finding what works best. Like they have before, we’ll see social media creators grasp onto this limitation and find innovative and effective ways to make their part of a Twitter Moment really count.

Image Credits: Twitter