It was recently announced that Twitter has been struggling, despite the influx of users due to Trumps presidency and his use of the social media platform.
“The social networking service reported a loss of $167m (£133m) in the final three months of 2016, as against $90m in the same period a year earlier.
There were 319 million active users, 4% up on a year earlier, but revenue from ads fell slightly to $638m.” – BBC News
Over the past few years, Twitter has become a more political and opinionated social media platform. Making many of the general public who aren’t interested in such debates, to be less active or even leave the app.
It’s a great platform for journalists and news, as it is able to pick up on trends and events very quickly. There’s also Twitter Moments and Live Video, making news articles very accessible. However, for other brands, it’s proving to be more difficult to expand on this platform. Many have been opting to use Twitter as more of a customer service platform, especially after the introduction of Twitter Chatbots, instead of for general interaction with customers.
Twitter was aiming to help drive brands through advertising options but compared to platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Linkedin, you’re unable to make adverts as targeted and therefore making it less value for money. There’s also limited ability for creativity, and for such creativity to be noticed, as ad spaces are so small.
Another feature that Twitter hasn’t developed yet is ranking posts on their engagement. If a post has recently received some engagement on Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram, it is ranked higher up on your feed. With the sheer volume of posts on Twitter, posts just disappear down your feed in a matter of moments, whether people have interacted with it or not.
There are still ways you can be making the most out of Twitter, and these will be particularly good if your brand focuses around news and keeps up with trending articles. Check out our previous post to find out how you can utilise Twitter.