Tag Archive for: X

Should my organisation leave Twitter/X – or stay on there?

Recent events on Twitter – or X, as we should now call it – have left individuals and some organisations to consider quitting the platform.

Critics of Elon Musk have accused him of using Twitter/X to stoke hate, amplify disinformation and of prioritising profit over social responsibility, particularly over the riots in the UK.

Elon Musk tweet on UK riots: "civil war is inevitable"

Although emotions have been running high these past couple of weeks, don’t rush to delete your company’s Twitter account – take some time to reflect on whether it still helps to meet your strategic objectives and audience needs – and have a comms plan if you are going to announce you are going to deactivate it.

Twitter is not as popular as it was – but it is still ‘the go-to place for news on social media’ 

A lot has changed since companies set up their Twitter accounts, a decade or more ago.

From once being the place for firms to post their news and announcements on social media, and offer a new form of customer service, it’s been overtaken by Instagram and rivalled by TikTok in terms of popularity among UK adults, according to the latest Ofcom Online Nation report.

Ofcom Online Nation reportsurvey: Top social media services among UK adults

And according to the recent Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024, it is further behind in terms of the top social, messaging and video networks in the UK:

Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024: TOP SOCIAL, MESSAGING, AND VIDEO NETWORKS in the UK

And the same piece of research claims that globally, TikTok has now overtaken X/Twitter as a source of news:

Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024: sources of news on social media. YouTube is used for news by almost a third (31%) of our global sample each week, WhatsApp by around a fifth (21%), while TikTok (13%) has overtaken Twitter (10%), now rebranded X, for the first time.

Since Musk took over Twitter, he has declared “f–k business” over firms deciding not to buy ads on the platform, and created confusion and trust issues with the ability for anyone to buy a blue tick – once a clear symbol of authority and veracity.

But he has also kept with the pre-takeover implementation of Community Notes to challenge incorrect posts and tried to boost X’s finances with paid subscriptions offering popular features to users, like the ability to edit a tweet within an hour of posting it and tempting content creators with shares of ad revenue.

Despite these turbulant 18 months, a study from the Pew Research Center in the US appears to show that X is still more of a destination for news than other social platforms – by that, I mean most Twitter users go there specifically for news, although others also see news passively in their Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook feeds.

And judging by the US presidential race, the UK General Election, the Euros and Olympics, if you want the latest breaking news, analysis (and hot takes), the best memes and an ability to immediately react to live events, nowhere can quite rival Twitter.

Interestingly, the head of social media for BBC Radio and Sounds, Jem Stone, claims the most popular tweets over the attempted assassination of Donald Trump seemed to be from the mainstream media:

Twitter: Jem Stone tweet:The two pieces of content most shared on X, and probably most remembered from the Trump rally on Saturday were the photography by @dougmillsnyt (the fist pump/bullet) and that very early reporting by @BBCBlindGazza interviewing a key witness. The BBC and the New York Times.

And today, the Premier League announced it had launched an account for refereeing and VAR updates – but only on X, not on any other platform.

Welcome to the Premier League Match Centre X account. This page will provide live updates from Stockley Park including information directly from the VAR Hub. We will issue near-live updates on operational matters from all matches - including clarification on refereeing and VAR.

However, for many of the public, they feel worn out by the sheer amount and depressing nature of the news, and prefer not to see it in their social feeds – and the data from the Reuters Institute report seems to back this up. And the sometime hostile nature of some users has made it an unwelcoming place.

Many companies’ have shifted their initial very public customer service accounts and conversations to DMs, their websites (for live chat or email), or even to WhatsApp business accounts.

Even for news organisations, including Sky News, Twitter had not been a big driver of referral traffic before the changes to links in posts:

Sky News Nick Sutton on Twitter referral traffic

What to do if you think your company should leave Twitter/X

 

1. Review how Twitter fits in with your comms strategy and business objectives

It’s good to have a regular social media review anyway, and this should always be part of your process when setting your next communications strategy.

Analyse the stats of your Twitter activity from the past year or so against previous reports. A significant decline in engagement could indicate that your target audience may not be on there anymore, or the shift to an algorithmic-focus has made it harder for people to see your posts – or that more effort is needed to improve their impact.

And check if your key stakeholders and individuals that you’re trying to influence are still actively on there. Check the replies tab to see if they are more of a replier/lurker than a poster (this used to be easier to check with the likes tab, before it was removed from public view.)

Do also compare it to your engagement performances on your other platforms. Don’t overfocus on followers – with the shift in prioritisation of algorithms over followers by most platforms, they aren’t as important as it once was. 

Away from the numbers, reflect upon whether X is a channel that still aligns with your values as a company. 

RNOH NHS Trust tweet:Due to significant changes on this platform in recent months, X is no longer consistent with our Trust values. Therefore RNOH is closing its account. Please follow us on Facebook, Instagram & LinkedIn. Thanks to everyone who has followed & supported us for the last 13 years.

You may have seen the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust post last week that it was deleting its account as “X is no longer consistent with our Trust values” – which include “equality, for all” and “trust, honesty and respect, for each other”.

But it was also the case that it appeared that this account was getting little interaction and engagement for its tweets – and wasn’t necessarily the best communication channel to reach their generally older audience.

However, the head of NHS England, Amanda Pritchard, continues to be active on Twitter, posting messages for staff, stakeholders, and the media.

Assess the pros and cons of leaving and consider the other ways for your customers to get in touch, through social, your website and offline.

If your social team or colleagues with high profile Twitter presences have been affected by what they’ve experienced on there, think about ways to protect their mental health – either for others to temporarily take over or rotate their responsibilities, or suggesting breaks from posting on there. 

2. Consult and inform internally and with key stakeholders

Talk and get approval from your wider comms team, senior leaders and executives before deciding to delete your Twitter account.

It is also worth considering whether to inform key external stakeholders of your decision before you communicate it publicly.

3. Communicate your decision clearly and link to other social accounts

If you do decide to leave Twitter, post and pin a tweet to users that includes an explanation (you don’t have to go into the details), and ideally link to your other social media accounts where they can follow you.

This is what BBC Radio 6 Music and Radio 2 did when they both left Twitter and Facebook earlier this year:

BBC Radio 6 Music tweet about no longer updating their Twitter account

BBC Radio 2 post about no longer updating their Facebook account

4. Leaving your Twitter account dormant may be better than deleting it

It can be confusing for followers who try to find your account on Twitter, only to find it has disappeared with no apparent notice. And by deleting your account, you open up the potential for the handle to be taken by people who may want to cause confusion, spread misinformation or cause harm.

Additionally, some very popular tweets can still provide invaluable advice, information or assistance to users. 

Leaving your account dormant, with a pinned tweet explaining what has happened and links to other communication channels, is an alternative to deleting it.

If you do want to go ahead with deactivating your company’s account, make sure to download a copy of all your tweets, content and data – they are a really valuable resource of insight into what worked well for future social campaigns and you may want to reuse that image or video.

You do have 30 days to change your mind if you do want to restore a deactivated account, so note the date in your shared calendars, just in case.

5. Continue to monitor Twitter

Don’t just walk away, delete the app and never check Twitter again – keep a close eye on mentions of your company and your deactivated handle to monitor the response to your decision, but also whether a customer or stakeholder posts something that requires your attention.

There is no perfect social media platform

I’ve seen a lot of posts on Twitter and elsewhere about moving to Threads, Instagram, or Bluesky. That may be understandable, for personal reasons.

But all platforms have their faults and downsides – there is no one ideal social media platform! It all depends upon where your audiences are and their interests – your target groups may be more spread across different spaces than before. And sadly, there is some nastiness and trolling on all of them.

For authorities, X is still is important – we’ve seen how it has been used effectively to disseminate vital public information. But it’s also been a good wake-up call for them to think more about how to better use other social channels to engage sometimes hard to reach audiences, rather than rely on a tweet.

And for everyone, it’s been a timely reminder to build more direct relationships with their audiences, than relying on third-party apps and sites.

Finally, a reminder that there can still be nice things on Twitter:

Robert Lindsay tweet: I was reluctant to post our Lola's condition as it's so personal but believe me your responses have been so heartwarming and kind. Thank you, It's also restored the positive of this media which can be for the good xxx

If you need an expert hand in helping you to review your social media approach, or modernising your wider communications strategy, get in touch.

7 practical takeaways from Ofcom’s Online Nation report

How have our online habits changed this past year? Ofcom have done a thorough exploration of this, with their latest Online Nation report.

I’ve gone through this fascinating study to pull out what their findings mean for you – and how you can be inspired to better reach and engage your audiences.

1. Do you have a good YouTube strategy?

Ofcom Online Nation report survey: YouTube is Top social media services among UK adults

For too many, YouTube is still seen as a dumping ground for TV ads and other unloved videos. But it should really be a cornerstone of your digital comms strategy.

YouTube is now the most popular social or digital media platform among UK adults, overtaking Facebook.

Think about how you can provide helpful and engaging content on your most popular or searched for topics, with clear video titles that include relevant keywords, and interesting thumbnail images.

It’s no surprise that TikTok is popular among younger adults, with 18-24 year olds using it for an average of 55 minutes a day on there, but Snapchat is proving remarkably resilient too, with its users spending nearly an hour a day on there.

It feels too early to make any decisive views on Threads, but despite aggressive promotion on Meta’s other platforms, it’s not quite caught on so far. Like many of us, I’ve dipped in and out of it. But Channel 4 is doing a good job on there!

Don’t write off Twitter (or X) – although its usage has declined overall, it’s still the main place for breaking news, sport and other live events, if that’s what your audiences are interested in, and journalists and opinion formers are still active there.

 

2. The one size fits all social approach doesn’t work anymore

Overall, we’re seeing an increasing fragmentation of social media, with different groups of audiences using a wider range of channels. Just plonking the same post and content on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram is unlikely to work as it may have done before.

You need to examine what is working on what channel for you – even if it contradicts the general findings of this report – and even be bold about focusing on fewer of them.

Diversify your forms of engagement and communication too – we’ve seen how a whim of a social media giant or tweak in the Google algorithm can have a serious impact.

Also, think what you’e trying to achieve – is it to provide information and drive awareness, where social can be beneficial, or is it driving people to your website, which is becoming trickier through these platforms without paying?

Tailoring and optimising content and messaging is so important as well. Generally, we have less time and patience than ever before – if your caption or first few seconds don’t interest them, it’s likely to struggle.

I’ve proven this theory wrong, with some 16:9 videos on TikTok getting hundreds of thousand of views, but the content has to really resonate with, and engage, your followers.

And with the general shift to more algorithmic-based feeds, look into an organic promotion strategy to help boost the visibility of your posts – this doesn’t mean just influential voices, but your own staff too!

 

3. Is your content and site optimised for mobile?

This may sound silly in 2023, but we are using our phones more than ever to go online, with computer and tablet usage declining, according to Ofcom.

Even though those aged 55+ use smartphones the least, this still accounted for the vast majority of their time spent online.

The irony wasn’t lost as I tried to read Ofcom’s PDF-only report on my phone…

 

4. Consider reaching and engaging your audiences on WhatsApp

Apparently, we have an average of 36 apps on our phones – having culled a load recently from my phone that I hadn’t used in ages, this surprised me!

Meta-owned apps were the top ones used by adults, with WhatsApp still the favoured app of the nation.

Have you thought about creating a broadcast channel or explored whether you can gain access to Channels?

Success on there so far has been a bit hit and miss (my assessment is: less link posts, more native chat and content.)

 

5. Think about how AI can help your teams do their jobs better and provide a better service and experience for your audiences

I was fascinated to learn that as many as three in ten UK internet users had tried out a generative AI tool, such as Chat GPT, DALL-E or Snapchat’s AI. There’s an apparent willingness for people to use them, if they’re clearly labelled as such

But as Microsoft discovered, great care is needed when using it to avoid undermining customer confidence in what you do.

AI is also being used to provide great benefit to comms jobs – Buckingham Palace used AI-driven software to help assess the notoriously-tricky-to-measure online sentiment to the recent royal visit to Kenya, and Whitehall is testing their own in-house tool to see how it can help improve tasks such as in press offices.

I recommend following Peter Heneghan who’s doing exciting work in this space.

 

6. We all have a duty as content creators and publishers to protect our audiences

“Attitudes to being online are complex and often ambivalent”, notes Ofcom.

It adds that “adults recognise the benefits of being online at a personal level, but less so for society overall… Although being online provides both adults and children with many benefits, the online environment also has the potential to expose internet users to harm.”

Misinformation is the biggest issue – with those surveyed claiming political or electoral content is the biggest problem. A quarter of users had also encountered hateful, offensive or discriminatory content in the past month.

Think about the steps you can take to protect followers: do you have a clear guide in place? Do staff know about it, from a professional, and also sadly, personal basis?

Worryingly, with the shift to more algorithmic-based feeds, over a third of users said their most recent harmful interaction came for just scrolling through their feeds, or the for you page.

Combined with the fact that less than half of those surveyed were aware of platforms’ rules and safety measures in place, I’d love to see a high profile campaign by these apps, government and Ofcom to raise awareness of how to report potential issues, and also improve media literacy of users online.

 

7. We’re more online than ever – but remember those who aren’t

UK adults spend on average 3¾ hours online – slightly more than this time last year. It’s no surprise that younger people spend nearly an hour more, and 65+ an hour less.

But what struck me was the numbers that don’t have access to the internet at home, either through desire or affordability.

It’s 7% of 16+, rising to 18% of over-65s. Over a quarter of people said this was due to cost.

Despite the race to be more and more digital, don’t forget to include all of your audiences in your communication efforts.

You can read Ofcom’s fasinating Online Nation report here.

After my first Twitter payout, is the X Premium programme worth it?

I admit I was a bit sceptical of Elon Musk’s claims about his Twitter/X Monetization programme (now called X Premium), but my curiosity got the better of me, so I signed up to Blue.

After my first payout, I think it is worth it, if you have a hobby account that’s popular – but you won’t get rich off it!

Is the X Premium scheme worth paying £10 a month for?

First of all, you need to do some basic maths to work out if it is worth the investment.

You have to be subscribed to Blue, or be a verified organisation as one of the qualifying criteria. Blue costs £9.60 a month, including taxes.

I’d also recommend checking your Twitter analytics before signing up. You need to have at least 15 million organic impressions on your cumulative posts in the last three months – that’s a lot for most people.

This rules out some of my hobby and personal accounts, apart from On This Day In WWE, which is dedicated to milestone anniversaries of events in wrestling, which has 50,000 followers. Having Blue has been helpful because I can post longer clips than 2’20”.

How do you qualify for the payouts from the X Premium scheme?

Looking at the last three months, which we believe to be the qualifying period (but we don’t know for certain), I was just over the threshold for impressions:

No alt text provided for this image
Twitter activity June 2023
Twitter activity July 2023

Twitter is hot on accounts using paid promotion, or bots or other ways to artificially boost your numbers.

The other qualifying criteria is that I needed to have at least 500 followers.

There are also caveats in the small print of X Ads Revenue Sharing terms – I had copyright claims for the footage I used from Sony India, which I successfully appealed, but that could count against you.

Are your Twitter/X posts interesting enough to make money?

Also buried in the small print is that the ad revenue sharing programme relates to the organic impressions of ads shown in replies from veriified users (ie fellow blue tickers) to the content you post.

So, if you’re generating a lot of replies to your content, great. That doesn’t mean you have to do clickbaity posts.

My wrestling content is aimed to stimulate reactions to memories – good or bad – about moments in wrestling history. Did you love a match – or hate a storyline? Optimising content to provoke genuine emotional reactions tends to do well.

And you are likely to need to post a lot to generate sufficient replies, unless something goes particularly viral.

Do you want to give Twitter/X your bank details?

The other consideration is that you need to have a Stripe account to receive payments. This requires using a bank account, which some people may be uncomfortable with.

Musk has talked about building financial services into Twitter, which has concerned some people – and you do connect your Stripe account with your Twitter account – but Stripe is a separate, and by all accounts, a secure organisation.

So how much did I make from X Monetization?

Drum roll… $202 – or £158.

Minus £30 of Twitter Blue payments, that’s £120. A nice amount for something I genuinely enjoy doing.

So if you’re hoping your meme account will make you millions…sorry.

Twitter/X Monetization first payout

But…

Again, Twitter makes clear in its terms that you have to have generated more than $50 (£40) to qualify for a payout.

And “X may modify or cancel the Program at any time in its sole discretion, including for business, financial, or legal reasons” – so this may be the peak in terms of payouts. They haven’t shown how they work out the amount they pay you.

Payouts are made “at a regular cadence” – it’s not clear how often.

So…

If you enjoy Twitter and posting what you do, and you get high levels of impressions, then it’s worth doing.

It’s more than any other social account is doing to help creators (unless you want to sell things through a shop on TikTok.)

Article updated to rename the Twitter Blue programme to X Premium

Read how Twitter’s changes to post headlines