Should Your Business be on Twitter?

Twitter has been consistently in the news since Elon Musk dipped into his deep pockets and purchased it back in October 2022. According to the BBC, “Mr. Musk said he didn't buy the firm ‘to make more money. I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love.’”

I think many of us watched this move and thought, “Good luck with that.”

As someone who is not much of a Twitter user, I have to admit that I didn’t pay too much attention to what was going on other than just a passing glance at what was in the news. Like many people who either culled their social media feeds or got off altogether when politics seemed to bring out the worst in a lot of people, Twitter was one of the first apps to be deleted from my phone.

I considered it important for my mental health.

That being said, I did check in every once in a while (especially if there were storms in the area – you can’t do better than Twitter to find out in real-time if a tornado is heading your way). But as a business owner, I’m not on it much.

However, Twitter has had its place – mainly because we all tend to have our social media platform of choice that we naturally gravitate toward, and many people choose Twitter. I know one of my clients would regularly get emails from a senior columnist at Investopedia complimenting her on her Twitter posts. That’s not a bad thing.

When Elon Musk took over Twitter, I had a client who had previously silenced his account saying that he would likely get back on as a result of this change in leadership. “Let’s see how it goes,” he said.

Well, here’s how it’s going.

While Elon touted his dream of making Twitter THE place for free speech, people started getting a little concerned when Twitter Blue was announced – a “service” that seemed to make Twitter more of a money maker than a safe place to share your thoughts. For all of Twitter Blue’s features, CLICK HERE.

More recently, according to the Associated Press, the following changes have been made as of July 1, 2023:

Elon Musk has limited the number of tweets that users can view each day — restrictions he described as an attempt to prevent unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data from the social media platform.
The site is now requiring people to log on to view tweets and profiles — a change in its longtime practice to allow everyone to peruse the chatter.
The restrictions could result in users being locked out of Twitter for the day after scrolling through several hundred tweets.

So…Should My Business Be There or Not?

The answer to this comes down to one very important question: is that where your ideal client is?

Overall, Twitter is known to be a little more casual than other platforms. The types of posts that do well there are…

Conversational
Witty
Thought-provoking

It would benefit you to take a look around to see if there are other businesses like yours that are doing well on Twitter. What are they posting? Are they getting likes and organic interaction? If you’re not seeing that, it’s for one of two reasons:

Businesses like yours don’t make sense on Twitter.
There’s room for you to make a name on Twitter if you do it right.

The second question is…is that where YOU want to be?

Social media is exactly what it says: it’s SOCIAL. If you’re not there to network with others, you likely won’t see significant growth on your account.

There are pros and cons as well as ethical dilemmas with every social media platform. I know people who won’t go near Facebook anymore and there is a nationwide concern about TikTok. While Twitter’s changes might not bother you, something could happen that makes another user permanently delete their account.

SIDE NOTE TO MY FINANCIAL ADVISOR CLIENTS:

Financial advisors’ usage of Twitter has fallen to a level not seen since 2014 and less than half that in 2021. Just 23% of advisors now say they use Twitter, according to the latest Putnam Investments’ latest research. Putnam Social Media Director Jayme Lacour confirmed this includes active (tweeting) and passive (no posting, just reading) use. As you can see below, the drop began sometime in 2021, well before Elon Musk assumed ownership of what’s now called X Corp.

This comes from a fabulous presentation I highly recommend you take a look at! CLICK HERE