Cutting Through the Noise: Why Twitter’s No-Duplicate Policy is A Blessing in Disguise
Are you struggling to reach your audience on social media and wondering what you can do? You’re not alone. Social media is now a difficult place to be seen and heard. So, what tactics should you use to break through and which should you skip?
One approach making recent news is the practice of repetitive posting. Earlier this year, Twitter made policy changes to stop the practice, identifying it as a form of spam.
Let’s take a closer look at the factors which make it hard to break through on social media and how Twitter’s new policy can actually be a stepping stone to a better social media marketing strategy.
Why Is It Difficult for Customers to See and Hear You on Social Media?
Consider that just seven years ago, in 2011, Facebook had 372 million monthly active users and now it has over 2 billion. Facebook’s younger cousin, Instagram, hit 1 billion monthly active users this year, up from 90 million in 2013. The common thread among these leading platforms and many others is that they have all expanded significantly over the past decade.
With this growth, a larger audience has become available for marketers and businesses to target. However, it has also brought a high level of competition for visibility from both organic and sponsored content.
Social marketing is considered one of the most effective digital marketing channels for customer retention in the U.S. It helps with:
- Increasing audience engagement
- Driving brand awareness
- Generating leads
- Increasing traffic to websites
- Improving sales
- Gaining marketplace insights
- And climbing the SERPs
All this is great, but it’s no secret.
According to a report by the Social Media Examiner from Q1 of 2018, 94% of marketers are working with Facebook, 66% with Instagram, 62% with Twitter, 56% with LinkedIn, 50% with YouTube, and 27% with Pinterest.
With all of the users and content flooding social media platforms every minute of every day, they have become crowded. Even when marketers reach their target audience, it’s increasingly hard to stand out and make a lasting impression.
Some have turned to spamming tactics to try and ensure their message gets seen and heard but as we can see in the recent steps taken by Twitter, the time for that approach is coming to an end.
What Is Twitter’s No-duplicate Policy?
Twitter identified that it was facing a spam problem because users were posting the same or very similar content many times, often across multiple accounts. In Q1, the platform set out to put a stop to the artificial inflation or amplification of tweets.
Here are the key policy changes:
- You can’t post identical or very similar content, mentions, or replies across multiple accounts they control.
- Identical or substantially similar accounts aren’t with or without the use of automation.
- Users can’t post multiple updates about a specific topic (whether on a single account or across multiple accounts) to subvert, manipulate, or artificially inflate the topic.
Along with these policy changes, the TweetDeck and Twitter API were updated to restrict users from performing coordinated actions across multiple accounts. Further, all applications and services which allowed users to perform actions across multiple Twitter accounts were required to become compliant with the new policy by March 23, 2018.
Read more about the no-duplicate policy.
How Your Business Can Use the No-duplicate Policy to Your Advantage
The great thing about this policy change is that it cleared out some of the noise on Twitter, allowing authentic posts to get more visibility. Now it’s time to ensure your brand is keeping it real.
Here are some ideas that can help you keep your Twitter content fresh:
Diversify your Twitter content
Instead of posting the same thing again and again, mix it up. Alternate between various content types such as:
- GIFs
- Images
- Custom graphics
- Infographics
- Twitter Cards
- Videos
- Memes
- Quotes
- Reports
- Blog excerpts
- Blog previews
- News
- Retweets from relevant industry authorities
- Questions
- Advice
- Captivating hooks
- And even invite the occasional influencer to host an account take over
The variety of content will make your profile more interesting for your audience.
Monitor brand mentions
You can no longer send mass automated replies. Instead, try utilizing social monitoring to track mentions of your brand or specific hashtags. Then, respond to mentions and join conversations about your brand.
Quality over quantity
Say goodbye to blanket messages, comments, follows, or posts and think in terms of quality over quantity. Take the time to plan tweets that will achieve your goals on the platform. Follow those who add value to your feed. Take time to read through other posts on your feed and write meaningful responses to them.
Alter the text on recycled posts
If you really want to recycle an idea from an old tweet, you will need to get creative. Note that Twitter doesn’t provide guidelines for what is considered “substantially similar” so it’s best to err on the side of caution by completely revamping it. Come up with a new angle, fresh text, and new media. In fact, some services are releasing new features that enable you to create multiple text and image variations for each of your social media posts.
Build authentic relationships
A great way to build relationships and gain more visibility is to authentically network. Engage with other people’s tweets, join relevant Twitter Chats, encourage your employees to use Twitter as a platform for their professional life, tweet about things that involve others and tag them, and retweet other posts that resonate with your brand.
By investing the time into original content, you will earn a following that trusts and values your messaging.
