Twitter: A Love/Hate Story
(Spoiler alert: this blog post does not talk about Elon Musk)
This is going to be a controversial topic with very different widely held beliefs, but in my own professional experience thus far I have absolutely no issue stating that Twitter is not for brands. You are wasting marketing efforts, resources and advertising dollarts trying to market yourself on Twitter.
Now, before we launch into an all-out cancel over this statement, let me break it down:
Your company may be very active on Twitter, with a verified account and several thousand followers who are engaging with you daily. That’s great! By all means continue to advertise and engage in discussions with your audience. You are playing the social media long game, after all.
However, if you are on 6+ other social media sites, or brand new to your industry/area, there are other most cost-effective, engaging, fruitful means of advertising than composing several 280-character tweets that will get lost in the void of the internet. It’s not sustainable for companies unless they are fully invested into the Twitter space and have a track record of investing and advertising on it.
I say this and I laugh because I, too, have a personal Twitter account where I promote my blogs and social media opinions. Do I expect anything to come from it? Absolutely not. It’s merely for me to direct traffic to my website and other, more socially relevant, social media sites. That’s not to say I despise Twitter - it’s quite the opposite. I love Twitter for the short-form breakdown of media and news, the ability to connect on a local level and see the world events happening in real-time (which, depending on who you talk to, is either a good or bad thing).
Should Your Brand Give Twitter the Bird? Just Say, “No,” If…
Your time and resources are high value.
Active and engaged brands utilize social experts who post dozens – sometimes hundreds – of Tweets per day. And then spend even more time on top of that to read other people's Tweets, retweet, comment, engage and have a constant conversation on Twitter. This time is a demand many brands can’t meet, especially when their people power could be better used elsewhere on a channel that drives more traffic and revenue.
Your voice can’t be contained to 280 characters.
After you evaluate your brand and it’s message and come to the conclusion that you cannot contain the “voice” of the company to 280 characters, then Twitter is not it.
You want to stand out from the crowd.
Twitter moves at lightning speed, and it’s full of noise. Unless you have a rock-solid strategy and a team of social whizzes standing by, it can feel that you’re merely shouting into the void. Twitter demands volume, frequency and consistency, and if it isn’t your marketing team’s top priority, the juice may be worth a lot less than the squeeze.
You have other social obligations.
Depending on your brand, your audience and your KPIs, you might find that other social platforms offer you greater ROI, from both a paid and organic perspective. Your best bet is to look at the biggest players in the social game, and determine where you can leverage your resources to have the biggest impact.
You want to keep politics out of it.
You know where to find your audience.
Speaks for itself.
