Can a Tweetstorm Increase Your Audience Engagement on Twitter?

A TweetStorm is a sequence of tweets where each following tweet is a reply to the previous tweet. The term Tweetstorm was coined and made famous by Marc Andreessen, the noted Silicon Valley investor, and entrepreneur.

A Tweetstorm is a way to share thoughts and comments that are too long for the 280 character limit for single Tweets.

Sometimes you’ll see the tweets numbered so you know the order to read them in. The common format, if you decide to number them, is (1/10, 2/10, 3/10…)

But clearly, you would need a consistent numbering approach throughout. Most tend not to number them. It could be worth experimenting, depending on how you write the tweets.

If you number them then people are more likely to notice that they are part of a sequence and click to see the entire thread, hence improving your engagement.

When you create a Tweet you can see a (+) button that offers you to “Add another tweet”.

Clicking this allows you to add a tweet that will be posted as a reply to the previous tweet allowing you to create a TweetStorm. The editor will show you if your tweet is too long so you can edit it down.

The Tweets are not posted until you press the “Tweet All” button.

When you click (Tweet All) all of your Tweets will be sent in sequence.

You might want to do it manually with each tweet as a reply to the previous if spreading the tweets across your follower’s timeline helps you. It is worth experimenting with different approaches to see what works best with your audience.

It’s best practice to write your TweetStorm posts offline in my notes app and then copy-paste them into the Twitter editor.

Why?

• If you want to add numbers to each tweet then you know in advance how many there are
• You have multiple chances to catch spelling errors as you write and paste them into Twitter
• You can plan out hashtags in advance
• You can copy-paste the text and reuse it as an Instagram, Facebook, or a blog post

• Each Tweet in the TweetStorm can have different hashtags, increasing the chances that your tweet will be seen by more people, and parts of your TweetStorm will be retweeted to different audiences. They might then click through and read the whole Thread.
• You don’t have to ‘cram’ all your message into a single tweet.
• Easier to repurpose into longer from social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram.
• You can use it to create a blog post or summarise a blog post, as a TweetStorm. Again increasing your content repurposing.
  Increased engagement and reach.
• You can add to them, which ‘resurrects’ an older TweetStorm and sparks new engagement.

Try to write each Tweet in the TweetStorm as a self-contained paragraph that works as a valid tweet in its own right. Other people like to have them follow on from each other so they only make sense when read together.

Numbering is harder, takes more time to prepare, and you have to remember to keep adding numbers when you add new tweets. But it might cause people to read the full thread.

Since the Tweets can show up in someone’s timeline in reverse order, try to write them so that each Tweet is self-contained and can stand alone. This is more work but allows the Tweets to drive more audience engagement possibility for potentially a different target group on each Tweet in the Storm.

TweetStorms are harder to automate so they do require more work on your part, but that human touch can make all the difference in your marketing efforts.