Twitter is a big old place. And just like big places in the real world, to get noticed you have to be either rich, popular or different. Preferably, all three.
Many of us and the brands we work with don't have the good fortune to be either of the first two. But thankfully, Twitter gives us plenty of chances to be different if we know how.
Everybody knows that the Twittersphere finds images more engaging. So it's a no brainer that more images are more engaging, and that images that offer interactivity are more engaging still.
Enter the Twitter image quiz
Now, I'm not going to lie and say that I invented this thing. I actually spotted it first on the BBC News Twitter page, used very effectively to quiz users on some facts about the UK general election.
What I have done is taken the idea and used it successfully in the campaigns I've been working on. I'd now like to share this little trick with you so you can start doing the same.
Essentially, the quiz is multiple choice and composed of four images, one for each choice. It's up to you how many of the answers are "correct", but it makes sense to just have one.
Twitter crops the images in such a way when previewed in a tweet that the user only sees approximately the middle 50% of the image, with the top and bottom 25% only revealed upon clicking. This allows you to put the answer in one hidden section, and a branded message in the other.
Does it work?
Here's one I tried out to advertise a blog on punctuation.
Fill the missing word: "The __ hearts were broken." More on punctuation from @The_YUNiversity: http://t.co/vJkzbwsAOE pic.twitter.com/erixRFXtld
- magazine.co.uk (@magazinecouk) June 11, 2015
I was thrilled with the response. 54 retweets is a great result for an account with under 1000 followers and it caused a huge spike on our impressions graph.
I've now gone on to suggest similar quizzes to other clients and the response has been good elsewhere.
One thing to bear in mind, however, is that as with all social media activities, you're taking a bit of a risk putting the creative time into these posts. It won't necessarily work out.
I'd suggest using them as a way to get influencer attention. With the punctuation example, if we hadn't got a retweet from Grammar YUNiversity, engagement would still have been good, but not quite as good as it was.
How can I do it?
Glad you asked! Here's a template with what dimensions you need to use for your images. In case it's not clear, the box is 600px square.
You'll notice that the white and blue areas are not split exactly 50 50. This is because although Twitter exactly the top and bottom 50% of the image on desktop, for some reason it crops a little less on mobile. Stick to these dimensions and the quiz should display correctly on both.
Now go forth and quiz yourself silly!