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Given the recent quake of changes made to the social media giant by Elon Musk, businesses and marketing departments around the world are feeling the shockwave. Despite Elon’s call for the continued support of the platform sighting brighter winds of change ahead, there has been an exodus of influentials and businesses leaving the platform with some exploring the more open versatilities of Mastodon. However, is the current Twitter trend of failure based on trusted facts and sources?
Despite Musk’s dream of Twitter being referred to as an everything app, large corporations and conglomerates do not seem to share his vision. For instance, United Airlines, Volkswagen, and Audi, amongst others, have all echoed a cease to spending resources on the platform with the haphazard mindset of monitoring how Twitter’s new leadership will progress.
Furthermore, according to a 2023 article by Buffer about the top social media sites for brands, Twitter is ranked 14th with 238 million MAUs (Monthly Active Users) with Facebook leading the pack, hosting 2.96 billion MAUs. However, Mastodon scored last with 2.5 million MAUs recorded, likely due to its relatively new emergence into the realm of social media.
However, despite being in 14th place, Twitter’s popularity varies depending on location. For example, according to a recent article from Hootsuite, 52% of Americans used Twitter during the study period. More surprisingly, the article also revealed that, among Gen Zs, Twitter has also sustained 30% faster growth than Instagram.
Granted, Twitter has not been entirely shielded by the recent backlash of public opinion towards some of Elon Musk’s decisions. However, despite last year’s bleak predictions for Twitter and the challenges it faced, it doesn’t quite seem to be the sinking ship it has been advertised to be. You may be wondering what Elon’s plan is, since taking the helm and if there are any Twitter marketing benefits.
If you currently have a Twitter account, have you considered moving to Twitter alternatives like Mastodon? In a survey conducted by HubSpot, they asked the same question to various digital marketers and the results were thought-provoking. 34% were planning on leaving, whereas 66% said that they were remaining. If you feel counted as one of those remaining or if you are still deciding, you’ll likely wonder what Twitter can offer your marketing right now.
Before you delve into Twitter and fill it with posts, you’ll need to first understand its demographic of users. According to an article earlier this year from Sprout Social, Twitter is a more statistically swayed platform with its user genders: 56.4% male and 43.6% female. Furthermore, it is most popular with people aged between 25 and 34 years old. Additionally, Multiple sites including Hootsuite, HubSpot and Sprout Social all concur that everyday Twitter users predominantly like to keep up to date with news and events. If your target demographic falls under these parameters, it may be worth considering implementing strategies for promoting your brand on Twitter.
According to the Social Media Trends Report 2023 from HubSpot, social media platforms are collectively evolving to become more customer service-focused for businesses with 80% of social media marketers in agreement that consumers are most often buying products within social media platforms. Most intriguingly, Sprout Social similarly stated that 53% of people on Twitter are more likely to be among the first to buy new products. With Elon’s vision of people using Twitter as an app heavily involved with e-commerce, it is likely he is also aware of these winds of change across social media.
What is Elon’s endgame? As you may be aware, there have been issues that even date back to before the Musk age of Twitter. This became more evident after Elon set up the Blue verifications, resulting in a high spike in reported fake accounts until the Blue verifications were subsequently pulled. However, an article from Social Media Today provided some valuable intel on Musk’s progress and plans. On November 16th, 2022, less than a month after Elon became the owner and CEO of Twitter, new user signups saw an all-time high since 2014 with 2 million recorded per day at the time.
In the world of creativity, interesting developments are occurring in Twitter for content creators with Musk signifying longer video clips to be attached to tweets and a monetisation program which could shake things up for YouTube’s 45/55 split. Furthermore, users could soon have encrypted DMs, like WhatsApp. With Twitter in a fluid state of change, time will tell if the dream Twitter people hope for will become reality.
