Twitter Moments. You’ve probably seen them when browsing Twitter. They’re a curated version of a Twitter feed, and marked by the small lightning bolt icon at the top of your Twitter page. When you click on the lightning bolt, you’ll find aggregated, trending news stories curated by Twitter staffers. They are an easy-to-consume format for the latest news and the most popular tweets around the globe. Launched in 2015, Twitter Moments were originally only crafted by in-house Twitter staffers for trending news. But over a series of announcements, Twitter has changed all of that.

Brands and individuals can now create Twitter Moments

Slowly ,the social media platform has expanded the capability to larger brands, and now to all Twitter users. Brands and individual users alike can create and capture some of their favorite, well, moments of the day, week or year.

Here are just a few examples of well done, branded Twitter moments:

Thankfully Twitter has made it ridiculously easy to create Twitter moments.  I recommend starting to learn with this easy-to-follow video:

But if that is too fast to follow, here are a few steps:

  1. Log in to the Twitter account you’d like to create a Moment with
  2. Go to the ‘Moments’ tab represented a small lightning bolt (⚡️ ) or to your personal Moments page in this URL structure: https://twitter.com/ [your username] /moments. For example, this is our Voxus branded Twitter Moment page: https://twitter.com/voxuspr/moments/
  3. In the right hand column there will be a button that says ‘Create New Moment’
  4. From there, Twitter will guide you through the process. You will be asked to:
    • Create a title for your Moment
    • Write a description for your Moment
    • Select the tweets you’d like to include in your moment (your own tweets, or tweets from around the twittersphere)
    • Set a cover image for your Tweets
    • Modify any of your images for mobile optimization
  5. Once you’re happy with your settings, publish your moment!

We encountered a few hiccups along the way. You’ll want to take the time to make sure your images are set up properly so they’ll show up nicely on mobile and desktop. Also FYI, the process of creating a moment will automatically generate a tweet that will publish on your own timeline; that is, once you hit publish it’s public (there is also an option for private Moments). When you create a moment, Twitter will also give you the permalink to your Moment which you can now share or embed anywhere on the web!

Reasons to create a Twitter Moment for your brand

So, Twitter has opened this capability to all, why should you or your company’s Twitter account go and create one? There are several great things you’re probably already doing with your account that could be maximized by a Moment.

A social media contest

Running a social media contest on Twitter?  Or creating a multi-day, multi-tweet campaign? Consider a Moment to create a simple story with all the tweets of that campaign.  One of our clients recently did a fun photo sharing campaign with Lego-sized computer servers.  A Moment would be a great way to capture all those tweets into one large story with one single landing page.

Product launch or news announcement

Easily round-up buzz and coverage around your latest product or news announcement by aggregating all the popular tweets that feature articles or discussion from influencers about your news.

Trending news stories in your niche

Many of our clients operate in the technology space and other niche markets, which means that there are news stories that may not make it to mainstream media. These companies can use Moments to create buzz around trending stories that matter in their industry by creating a Moment that includes tweets from industry influencers as well as its own tweets on the news. This inserts the company into the discussion and makes it easy to consume news for those that it matters.

A Twitter storm or long-winded discussion Moment

Have a lot to say? More than 140 characters worth? This could be an easy workaround for a long-winded tweet that you can’t fit into the normal 140 characters. Simply tweet out what you’d like to tweet and aggregate them all into a moment.

How to make the best Twitter Moment:

Twitter nicely recapped its best recommendations for Twitter moments in, you guessed it, a Twitter Moment! You can see it here:

Twitter also added several more tips in a blog post here. Make a moment, let us know by tweeting to @VoxusPR! We’d like to see your work!