X is currently working on a new display which would ensure that your followers are shown your pinned posts in the app, via a new, dedicated breakout display in-stream.
It’s not clear if the same unit would be displayed in the “Following” feed also, but the idea is that if you’re highlighting your best posts by pinning them, ensuring that your audience sees them should help to increase overall engagement.
Though I’m not sure that it’ll actually work that way in practice.
The concept was actually suggested by X owner Elon Musk last month, who proclaimed that:
So, I’m not sure that this would necessarily mean that all of your followers end up seeing your pinned posts, as they would seemingly need to scroll through this unit for that to happen. And for users who follow a lot of profiles, that could be a lot of posts to swipe through, even with the noted limit of one pinned post, per profile every 48 hours to be featured.
Not everyone’s going to pin posts, of course, and X’s own data shows that only 20% of its users ever post anything at all in the app, reducing the potential usage of the feature by a lot. But the non-intuitive, side-scrolling unit seems like a compromise in what Musk initially pledged on this, in terms of visibility.
Though I guess X would essentially be facilitating broader reach, if users choose to use it?
In any event, I’m not sure that this will end up being an amazing addition for general users, though for those looking to get more reach and traction, it could be another consideration in your X posting strategy.
It could be that competition for space in these display units ends up being high, depending on how many people each of your followers also follow, but it could also be very low in many cases, which could then help you gain more traction and reach.
