Twitter has launched Moments analytics, which would allow you to see statistics Moments you have created, including “Opens,” “Shares,” “Likes” and “Unique Opens.” On the surface, the feature seems to be a good idea for entrepreneurs and marketers, given that the tool allows you to check which of the Moments you have created are performing and analyze if they resonate well with your target market.

But many experts can’t make heads or tails of the option, which they say is generally symptomatic of this social media platform.

The Moment of Innovative Change

When introduced two years ago, Twitter touted Moments as an innovative change, a new method of harnessing the Twitter experience. Not a few thought that Moments would address one of the main challenges of the social media platform—essentially that Twitter is particularly hard to understand, especially for non-users. Moments, the proponents say, would be able to fix this problem.

Moments would make it easier and faster to access the tons of insights one can glean from Twitter, while at same time, it would provide content using a powerful, immersive format.

Everything about Moments seemed destined for a win. It all made sense back then. But even from the get-go, there were already problems about Moments. Since then, the feature has not recovered much. Everything has been downhill ever since.

(Image by Sarah Perez)

Right from the beginning, one of the main concerns with Moments was that only people who could be able to create them were the social platform’s own curation team as well as some selected partners.

A Moment of Problems

The main problem around Twitter Moments was the in-house content creation people had full control and editorial discrepancy around what made it on the Moments Board. The core value of the essential storytelling process — popularized later by the likes of Snapchat Stories, Instagram as well as Facebook in various manners — got immediately reduced.

Back then, Twitter users could not tell their own, special stories using Moments. Back then, users could only see Moments based on what others told them these were relevant to them.

Looking back, this decision seemed it was a mistake.

After all, social media are all about people who want to share their perspectives and stories. By not giving social media users the chance to harness the tool to share their stories and accounts defies the rationale of why storytelling in social media has become wildly popular.

In this case, what happened was few people tried Moments, or returned to check it if it was available to all. While Moments was sort of a great tool Twitter had been proud of, it actually did not resonate very well with its users.

(Image by Ben Evans)

The Moment of Freedom

A year later, Twitter finally opened Moments to all its users. When users were about to decide to finally use the tab back then in September of last year, reports immediately surfaced that the social media platform was planning to demote the Moments tab.

These reports were later proven correct when a few months later, “Explore” tab was launched to replace Moments—or to be more precise, amalgamate the tool within it.

That seemed, at least for some tech pundits, it was clear admission on the part of Twitter that Moments failed to lived up to their expectation. Still Twitter kept pushing forward and moving on, launching new features such as these analytics tools.

So now that Twitter has relaunched Moments in a way, is the tool a key feature or merely an add-on? Are Moments worth investing time and effort on the part of the users in learning and working with the tool? How do we know Twitter would not decommission Moments at some point because of lack of interest?

The Super Bowl of Twitter Ingenuity: Marketing an Event

But given the quirky, unique nature of the social media landscape, individual results may vary. At this point, it is quite hard to conclude whether Moments would actually be a hit or not. It seems there needs to be a major event like the Super Bowl to tie and draw people into using their own Twitter Moments. For example, BFG’s Blog highlighted this example perfectly with the best Super Bowl Moments on Twitter.

But having said that, there are ways for entrepreneurs and marketers to use Moments to their advantage. In truth, Moments have a lot of good potential which can be tapped to your business or brand’s benefit.

For instance, Moments are a good way of promoting a certain event about your product or service, whether the event is upcoming, happening right now, or a past one. With Moments, businesses can have a great way of promoting their events, getting followers become more informed and hyped about what is coming and providing them all the updates they need to know in one place. 

Moments can help businesses to showcase their top digital content in one interactive and engaging presentation.

The New Way to Display Twitter Video

These days, video has become a big deal on social media. It is no wonder, incorporating video tweets in Twitter Moments can be a good way of telling the story of your brand. With the use of video in Moments, business can help strengthen engagement and boost results for your business.

With Moments, businesses can recycle their best tweets. Sometimes, even if the company produces good tweets, they can get immediately lost in the vast sea of content typical of Twitter. Some marketers get frustrated when this happens because they spent so much effort and time to put together and do not get the effect they intended.

Capture Your Moment. Highlight Your Moment

Moments can also allow businesses to capture tweets relevant to their brands and let them tell stories about their products or services.

A Moment can also allow entrepreneurs to pin premium tweet content, giving valuable content major prime time viewing attention for visitors and hopefully, consumers, to their Twitter profiles.

Twitter Moments can also help businesses and marketers share their most valuable Twitter content on their website as well as blogs, where people can view them, interact with you, and hopefully engage you regarding your products and services.

You can also use Twitter Moments to create an engaging product demo. Your business can put together valuable Tweets in a series that tell users a narrative and show them how to best use your product or service.

What is your opinion about Moments? Have you used Moments for your business? How do you plan to use this new tool to promote your brand or business?

About the Author:

Cley is a marketing consultant, specialising in influencer outreach and marketing. The backbone of what he does is creating a lasting connection and relationship between a brand and its influencer and by extension bringing in loyal return customers. When not dreaming about content, Cley is scaling sheer rock faces. Tweet him @TheCleyWilliams.