As your Twitter followers scroll through their news feed, make sure your tweet captures their attention. Rather than relying on just 140 characters, kick up your campaign, service or promotional event with an engaging picture. Take advantage of common curiosity and get those potential customers to click on your pic! From that point, you have the potential to convert that lead into a sale. Twitter images give you the opportunity to increase your brand awareness by reaching out to a new section of your target market audience.
When to Tweet an Image
You do not need to attach an image to every tweet that you send out. A better strategy is to aim for quality over quantity when adding images into your Twitter strategy. You want to use images to attract the attention of your followers. Give them a reason to stop scrolling through their news feed and interact with your company. Engagement occurs each time one of your followers re-tweets an image you share, replies to that image or follows through on the call-to-action you request in an image.
Think of your audience and the promotional message you want to send them. Create a related image and tweet it to your followers. People love looking at pictures.
- Share a sneak peek of a new product or service.
- Introduce a new staff member to the team.
The goal is to add value to your followers’ experience with your company.
How to Tweet an Image
Twitter gives you the opportunity to easily tweet an image from your Smartphone, tablet camera roll, or from the hard drive of your desktop or laptop computer systems. The directions that follow can help you learn how to add an image to your tweets.
- Step One: Select an image of interest and make any necessary edits.
- Step Two: Click on the square ‘compose a tweet’ icon at the top right-hand of your user screen.
- Step Three: Click the camera icon at the bottom left of the tweet screen to bring up your camera roll or picture file on your chosen device.
- Step Four: Scroll through your photo library until you find the image you want.
- Step Five: Select the image and click ‘add’ so that it now appears in your tweet screen.
- Step Six: Add an article link, a set of hashtags or other relevant text in the body of the tweet.
With these steps now complete, your tweet is ready to send out to your audience. By adding one or two relevant hashtags, you increase the reach a tweet has within the Twitter audience.
The more audience members that come in contact with your image tweet, the higher your chances are for engagement to take place. It gives you the opportunity to reach a new target market segment that you would not otherwise be able to through traditional marketing practices.
Twitter Image Ideas
Twitter provides you with a wealth of opportunities to start conversations with your followers by using images. Think for a moment about what prompts you to interact with other Twitter accounts. Perhaps it was an image conveying a cause you are passionate about or matches a topic of interest that is on your mind at the moment. Use that perspective to create images for your Twitter audience. Here are a few other ways you can add images to Twitter.
Image and Link Combinations
When you create content that adds value for your audience, there is likely to be an image attachment as part of that content. You can increase the audience exposure for that content piece by tweeting out the image with a link to the content. There are three different ways you can match an image with a content link to enhance your audience’s experience with your company.
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Article Image
Each article you read online has an image that is the central focus of that article. It can enhance the main idea of the article or illustrate a main point from the article. Share that image with a corresponding link in a tweet to your followers.
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Website Screenshot
When you come across an industry relevant website that focuses on a topic of interest to your target market audience, capture a screenshot of that page. You can add that image to a tweet containing the website link and give your audience another resource for solving a problem they may have.
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Blog Content
Your blog focuses on content that is relevant to your target market audience. It provides insight into your company operations while showcasing your knowledge on a topic that is relevant to your industry. Each time you create a new blog post, add the central image from that post along with the link in a tweet to your followers.
Current Events
Images give you an opportunity to show a more personal side of your business. People love to see what goes on behind closed doors. You can accommodate this point of interest by adding images to company events that take place. Anything that peaks their interest in what you are working on will generate a substantial amount of engagement action for your account.
- Promote an office competition by posting a picture of office teams and send out a tweet asking your followers to pick a team they like.
- Share images from a charitable contribution day where your company spends time giving back to the community.
- Snap a picture of a product development meeting and send a tweet teasing your followers about what you have in store for them.
Quotes
Everyone likes a burst of inspiration now and then. Motivational images present you with the perfect opportunity to inject a little inspiration into the lives of your followers. They will appreciate the sentiment as they are scrolling through their Twitter news feed. When they come across a quote image that strikes a chord with them, there is a good chance they will share that image with their audience.
- You want to select quotes that match your brand image or are relevant to the promotional message you want to send out to your audience.
- Use quotes from personalities that your audience finds inspiration from such as an industry leader or celebrity icon.
- You can also create quotational images that feature a phrase you share in a content piece that resonates with your audience. You can share the quotation text with a matching image as well.
Product or Skill Highlight
Seek out something that helps your company stand out from the crowd. Twitter images provide you with a great platform to showcase what makes your company unique.
- It can be a product feature that your competition overlooks.
- One of your staff members may have a special skill, such as drawing, that your customers would love to see.
Your followers will learn something new about a product, a service or a staff member which in turn, works to make your business more personable.
Announcement of New Staff
Social media creates a platform for interaction and social conversations. Part of that conversation should center around introducing new members of your team.
- When you hire a new person, snap a picture and create a tweet around what that person likes to do outside of the office.
- You can also feature that person in a blog article on your website and then tweet the link to that post along with a picture of the person to your followers.
Your followers are likely to respond by welcoming the new staff member aboard or saying ‘hello’ to them the next time they stop by your office.
Size Matters
There is an ideal size you need to use on Twitter for your images to be effective. You want to aim for images that are 1024 pixels long by 512 pixels wide. Twitter takes that image and creates a slightly smaller thumbnail version that appears in the news feed. When creating that thumbnail, Twitter may need to resize your original image.
- The process starts as Twitter works to identify the main focal point of your image.
- When that point is identified, the picture resizes to make that area the new center spot on the image.
- In the event that Twitter is unable to identify a clear central focal point, a random portion of the picture becomes the thumbnail.
Keep this process in mind when deciding what image to include in your tweet. You may need to edit an image to make it match the initial size requirement so it presents the ideal thumbnail appearance in the news feed.
It’s easy to see the benefits that adding images to your Twitter account can provide. These ideas should begin to scratch the surface on how you can use images to optimize your potential target market reach within your industry. Experiment with different ideas to find the ones that work the best for your company brand.
