A screenshot is worth a lot of words.
Screenshots have existed for a while, but now that they’re being used more and more, they are really coming into their prime. This article from Wired talks about the stats of screenshots. Their popularity is gaining for everything from documentation of crazy ex’s to storing notes about a project.
One example mentioned was a tale of two tweets: one had a link to an article, the other a readable screenshot of the article’s text. The screenshot received 400 times more retweets than the link. Author Austin Kleon recently included a post in his email newsletter about that relatively new trend in that same vein.
One of the first people I’ve seen use this method of tweeting was Alton Brown. A quick scan of his timeline shows nearly all of his non-retweets have images, and a good deal of his images are hand written post-its. Not quite a screenshot, but that’s the point. If images get more attention on twitter, then use them to spread your message.
We’ve talked about how important including images in your tweets is to getting your followers engaged, but this new trend could be especially useful for bookshops. Sharing a quick picture of the page you just read with the great passage highlighted could work better than a link to the review. A screenshot of an author’s tweet about your store will reach more of your followers, and it still gives the same credit to the author.
Once you start looking for opportunities they will be everywhere.
Need a refresher on how to take a screenshot on your smart phone or computer screen? Here ya go!
