Twitter was just purchased and taken private by Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX, fmr. PayPal), and there have been a number of high profile problems at the network in the last week, clients are asking “as a small business should I stick with Twitter?”
Our advice with Twitter has always been “is your audience on Twitter?” That holds true for any social network. Typically the audience for Twitter are going to be media, not-for-profit organizations. So if you’re working with those groups (magazine, TV, advocacy, not-for-profits) and those are your audience, that’s who you need to factor in when deciding to stick with Twitter.
About 25% or more of Twitter’s accounts are bots. We know this through disclosures during Elon Musk’s unsuccessful bid to get out of buying Twitter, but also, because early on in social media world, we knew a few clients who actually contracted with companies producing these bot accounts to gain more followers (!) While we don’t recommend this, it was pretty common practice about a decade ago, continuing up to this day.
If your followers are bots, they’re not buying from you.
But the behavior of Twitter users is different country by country. This means that if you work with customers in the UK, your Twitter presence might have been more robust (although Instagram has taken a big chunk out of that Twitter base for a number of our customers over the years.) To really assess whether Twitter is working for you, consult your analytics. If you’re getting traffic from Twitter (and subsequent conversions on your website), you may want to stick with it.
If you’re not getting traffic from Twitter, it may be time to reduce and/or get off the platform.
Why? Politics aside, an unmoderated platform with controversial anti-Semitic, racist or fascist content is no place for brands of any size. But beyond that, your customers may have left or may be leaving the platform, and THAT is truly the only reason to stay or go – go where your customers are going.
To that end, from your analytics, determine your best traffic from social media, and devote additional resources there for a while. More posts, more engaging posts like short video or reels. Maintain content publishing consistency and people will visit, sign up on your email list, visit more and purchase.
Is there potential for Twitter in the future? Yes, possibly. If Musk gets a handle on Twitter’s bots, if they haven’t laid off too many key people who understand the framework of how it is built, and if customers aren’t lured away to other platforms and stay there, yes. Should you delete your account? We aren’t advising clients delete their accounts at this time, but we are advising a pause on activity on the platform until such time as you can evaluate whether the investment in time is worth it.
That holds true for ANY platform. If you’ve spent consistent time on it, and it’s not driving traffic to your site, it’s time to put your energy on the ones that do.
Need a little help with all this? Just fill out the form, I’ll get back with you.
