Feeling cramped by Twitter’s 140-character limit? Introducing: Twitter Moments. This exciting new development from Twitter has a few predecessors, including Storify and Snapchat Stories, but it comes with a few unique features.
Narrative social media is in and you can’t tell a big story in just one tweet. With Twitter Moments, you can now weave tweets together into compilations. The possibilities for these compilations is endless: they could be chronological narratives, back-and-forth debates, a sequence building an argument, breakdowns of Twitter trends or news. Or, as they’re most commonly being used now, Twitter Moments can be listicles of funny tweets.
You can add tweets from any account into a Moment that’s entirely your own. But before you can create your Moment masterpiece, you have to learn the basics. How do you make a Twitter Moment?
How do I make a Twitter moment?
Here’s the short version.
- Login to Twitter
- Navigate to the Moments interface: twitter.com/[yourusername]/moments
- Select Create New Moment
- Choose a title, description, and cover image
- Use the four search options within Moments to find and add tweets to your Moment
- Tweets I’ve liked
- Tweets by account
- Tweet search
- Tweet link
- Organize your Moment using the up/down arrows beside each tweet
- Publish and share
How do I make a great Twitter Moment?
A step-by-step guide to making a great Twitter Moment that your followers will enjoy.
Step 1. Choose the tweets you want to include in your Moment
You can build a Twitter Moment with any tweets from any accounts. The easiest way to compile these is not by using the Moments search options, but by copying and pasting the URLs for the tweets into a separate list (a simple text file works well for this). Organize the tweets in the order that you want to display them. You could choose reverse-chronological, chronological, postmodernist non-linear slam poem: go crazy.
Just make sure the order of your chosen tweets is understandable. Moments are like Storify, but not exactly: you can’t add descriptions to the tweets. The tweets you include and the order that they’re in need to be self-explanatory.
Step 2. Build your Moment on Twitter at twitter.com/yourusername/moments
With your tweets already selected, you’re ready to go. Navigate to the Moments interface from your profile.
From your profile, click Create Moment.
The Create Moment menu will be either in the left or right sidebar of your screen.
Step 3. Write a compelling title and a brief description
Your title and description will be displayed at the top of your Moment. You can edit them later, but all editing will be visible to viewers — even when it’s in process.
Because you can’t include individual descriptions with your tweets, this text is all you get to explain what this Moment is about. I’m trying to write this article without saying the word Moment more than 20 times, and am failing pretty hard.
Step 4. Create a cover image, or choose one from a tweeted image
Moment cover images are square. Good dimensions for optimum viewing on a desktop, without compromising mobile load time, are 1,000 by 1,000 px.
Moment cover images only ever occupy less than 30% of a desktop screen, so even on the largest monitors, your image will be crisp.
Don’t have a square image? No problem.
You can crop the image when you set the cover.
Step 5. Add your tweets
Navigate to the Tweet Link pane to add your list. Then, enter your selected tweet URLs in the order you’d like them to be displayed. The other three options are more time-consuming: you’ll do a lot of scrolling to find the tweets you want to add.
Add the tweets in the order that you’d like them to be displayed. This will save you from the fidget-y sorter, where you can move tweets only up or down one position at a time.
Step 5. Order, review, and optimize for mobile. All later editing will be live.
Need to change the order of your tweets? Use the up and down arrows on the tweets you’ve added to shift their position.
If your tweets include images, Twitter allows you to select the area you’d like displayed on mobile.
Like the cover photo, this is a simple two step cropping process that will return you to the Moment interface once complete. Is the word Moment starting to sound weird to anyone else? I’ve use it 40 times in this article. You know when you repeat a word many times, and it just starts to sound weird?
If most of your Twitter followers are on mobile, optimizing images for them is a great idea. On desktop, the full images will be shown.
Step 6. Publish and share
Your Moment masterpiece is now complete. If you want your colleagues to see the Moment before everyone does, use the …More dropdown menu and select Share Moment Privately.
Ready for the entire world to see your Moment? Click Publish.
Moments are a new feature that not all Twitter users have discovered, so be sure to share your masterpiece after publishing it.
The word Moment really is odd, isn’t it? Comet in Moment-land.
Step 7. Track engagement with your Moment
Do your followers love or hate this new type of Twitter storytelling? Twitter doesn’t currently provide stats on Moments, but do not despair: there’s a workaround. Or two.
- Share your Moments as tweets, and track engagement with those tweets (Crowdbabble is a great option for this)
- Include a specific hashtag in tweets that share your Moments, and track the engagement with that hashtag (again, Crowdbabble)
You are now a Moment-making master
You have now mastered the art of Moments. Now, you can experiment, measure, and try again. Need Moment inspiration? Check out Crowdbabble’s first Twitter Moment and this funny one.
And if you mess up? You can always unpublish.
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