This article contains recommendations that we stand by, as of 3pm ET on Friday, November 11. But the situation with Twitter is changing by the day. We’ll be refreshing this content as new developments cause us to rethink how marketers should move forward.
Twitter is pretty important to us, here at VERDINO. No, we’re not the world’s most active tweeters (twits? twitterers?) anymore, although we may have been among the earliest. And no, we don’t offer Twitter management as a standalone service, although we often create the social assets our clients use to promote their thought leadership content.
But in a way you might say our agency was born on Twitter. It’s where Amanda and I first met. And my 2010 book microMARKETING, which laid out a framework that we still draw some inspiration from today, coincided with the mainstreaming of Twitter as a community and content marketing channel.
And now, as I’m sure you know Twitter is at an inflection point. Recently acquired by Elon Musk for a cool $44 billion, the platform is undergoing an almost shocking amount of change. Stripped to a skeleton staff. Struggling to maintain content moderation guardrails. Shedding power users and advertisers. Struggling to set a new course. And stumbling around the introduction of new revenue models. Some analysts and insiders even say that the future of the platform itself is at risk, which is especially concerning given that one of those people is Elon Musk himself.
Any marketer that maintains a presence on the popular social media network might — and should — be asking what this means for them. Essentially: Should I stay or should I go?
From our perspective, there’s no easy answer as long as there are so many unknowns. But we do think there are some smart near-term moves. And these are the kinds of moves we’re recommending to our clients. Now to be clear, our clients tend to be B2B technology companies but these principles should apply regardless of your industry. Most are up to speed on the major plot points but aren’t necessarily following the details of the drama as it unfolds — this might be you too.
So, what are we telling marketers to do about Twitter, right now (as of the moment I hit publish on this post… given the speed at which the situation is changing, we’ll no doubt be updating our POV early and often)?
- Protect Your Brand
- Pause Paid Advertising and Promotion
- Do Not Subscribe to Twitter Blue (Yet)
- Otherwise, Stay the Course (For Now)
Now, let’s dig into each of these for some specifics, the background details you need to know, and the reasons why we think these are the right moves right now.
Protect Your Brand
Arguably, every recommendation that follows could fall under this header. But there are a number of specific things we’re recommending our clients do — a number of things that are, in fact, good practice regardless but are especially important given the greater volatility of Twitter as a company and higher risk profile of Twitter as a marketing platform.
Before diving into the specifics, I want to point out that these recommendations apply for your official corporate profiles and any key or high profile executive profiles. For that matter, you may want to share these best practices with your entire workforce given that every member of your team is a representation of your business and your brand.
Here goes:
Proactively Defend Your Identity
We go deeper into the new Twitter Blue paid subscription below, but here it warrants a mention specifically as a matter of brand reputation. As the flubbed initial rollout (since rolled back) demonstrated, offering any user the ability to buy a blue checkmark with no verification of identity opens the floodgates for scammers and impersonators. This past week alone saw the launch of faux profiles for a wide range of corporations, celebrities, and politicians. We’ve already seen real, economic fallout from this as Eli Lilly’s stock tanked after a blue check impersonator promoted free insulin.
Granted the risk runs higher if you’re Eli Lilly or Coca-Cola than if you’re (let’s say) a mid-sized B2B SaaS platform. Still, you never know — until you know. Be vigilant. Routinely search for accounts that use your brand name or trademarks to parody or impersonate your organization; report anyone who violates Twitter’s rules against impersonation. (To be frank, it’s unclear how effective this will be given both the ongoing confusion over moderation policy and the very real staffing issues following massive layoffs. But our POV is that it’s important to at least try.)
Again, the same applies for key people in your organization. A scammer tweeting inaccurate or inappropriate content from an account posing as a member of your c-suite or representative from your sales team can do irreperable harm.
Review and Refresh Your Profile
While you’re at it, this isn’t a bad time to review and refresh your profile to ensure that the bio copy, avatar, header image, and other information (location, website, etc) are current and correct. Given the rising confusion over how users can recognize official or verified accounts, you might consider adding language to your profile and even text in your profile or header images to reinforce your status as the real deal. You might also compose and pin a tweet to the top of your profile, letting visitors know they’ve foudn the right (real) company and offering an alternative way to contact your company — email, phone — if they need support or service.
This is in no way foolproof but isn’t a bad idea in lieu of buying Twitter Blue which (see below!) we reocommend you hold off on for the time being — not that Blue is even an option at the time of this posting.
Secure Your Account(s)
Now is the perfect time to update passwords, confirm accurate personal or professional profile information, remove inactive or outdated users who may have authorization in your publishing tools, and activate two-factor authentication.
If possible, you may even want to remove any payment account details just to be safe. Granted, this may not be feasible if you’re running ad campaigns (see below) or have an active Twitter Blue profile (see below).
Save Your Content
If your content is valuable or you consider it important to maintain a record of your tweets, you might want to download an archive of your data — now and periodically throughout this period of uncertainty. If worse comes to worst, this will ensure all is not lost (I know, that sounds dramatic) should your account be compromised or deactivated, or if Twitter ceases operations.
Cleanse Your Community
From what we’ve seen, many B2B brands treat their social media communities (their follows and followers) as a set-and-forget situation. That’s probably never a good idea, and now there’s a reasonable excuse to clean things up. To be clear, I’m not saying ‘clean house.’ But a thoughtful review of the accounts you follow and those who follow you, combined with a judicious round of unfollowing, blocking and (to the extent it matters anymore) reporting suspicious profiles, may help reduce your risk of engaging with bots, scammers, and bad actors.
Pause Advertising and Paid Promotion
If you’re the kind of company we tend to work with here at VERDINO, odds are you’re not spending seven figures on Twitter ads. But many B2B marketers do use the platform to promote thought leadership, as a PPC channel for lead generation, to reach clients and prospects, and more. If this is you, we’d recommend pushing pause on any paid programs. Simply put, the platform’s direction is unclear, the environment has become riskier in absence of effective content moderation, and the stability and viability of the company are in question.
Here’s what you need to know, as you think this through.
Putting aside how you feel about Elon Musk and your POV on whether the world’s richest man should control one of the world’s most important communication channels (a concern that extends to other billionaires buying other media properties, of course), there is a practical and unequivocal argument for pushing pause on paid Twitter programs: the age-old issue of content moderation and brand environment.
Musk has openly stated his position as a free speech absolutist — a stance that is already being put to the test (more on this below), is not inherently ‘bad’ but is arguably irrelevant as free speech applies to government overreach and Twitter is not the government, and raises the concern that a platform without guardrails will be an unfit environment for marketers.
It’s not surprising that one of the first things Musk did after closing the deal was tweet an open letter, ensuring brands that Twitter will not turn into a ‘free-for-all-hellscape’ and hold a big brands pow wow that left some of the company’s biggest advertisers unconvinced. GM had already pushed pause on its spend pending “more information about the site’s direction under new ownership” — a position the automaker says is typical whenever a media property changes hands but is more notable here given that GM competes against Elon’s Tesla. Agency giant IPG has advised its clients to push pause too, while GroupM hints that some of its clients have asked that their ads be put on hold.
If you’re concerned about whether Twitter remains the right place to promote your thought leadership, interact with customers, or engage prospective employees, your concerns would not be unfounded. According to one watch-dog, hate speech has soared on the network since Musk’s takeover. Following widely publicized layoffs and the less-widely-publicized voluntary departure of Yoel Roth, Twitter’s content moderation czar, it’s unclear how (or if) Twitter intends to make the platform safe and welcoming for all. For these reasons alone, suspending your paid support of the platform is a smart move.
Now, let’s say you’re not at all concerned about the ad environment.
The company’s instablility alone should be enough reason to exercise caution with your paid media dollars. The recent layoffs cut deep, so deep that Musk has been trying to lure some employees back into the fold, even as other key leaders resign from their roles. One engineer has gone public, warning that the remaining organization is insufficient to maintain the platform and sustain operations. Musk himself has warned that the company may be headed into bankruptcy.
Do Not Subscribe to Twitter Blue (Yet)
Musk’s Twitter Blue aims to be a paid subscription tier (currently planned at $8/month after horror author Stephen King haggled the price down from $20/month) that will ‘earn’ paying users a coveted blue checkmark, priority visibility on the network, and presumably, the ability to edit tweets already offered under an existing, less expensive Twitter Blue paid plan.
If you need a short and sweet rationale, the new Twitter Blue is not yet clearly defined so I’d recommend that you hold off until you know what you’re actually buying. It has been introduced, halted, switched up, then halted again. The Twitter team (including Musk himself) have also suggested that there might be a different “official” tag applied to notable accounts to distinguish these from purchased blue checks.
But as you keep an eye on this, here’s what you need to know.
On pre-Musk Twitter, the verification process that bestowed blue checks on notable accounts and the Twitter Blue subscription that offered additional features (most notably, the ability to edit your tweets) were wholly separate. A blue check was granted to a select set of accounts after review and verification for authenticity. While you could certainly poke holes at the process for being unnecessarily opaque, and scratch your head at why certain notable individuals were never verified, the method did at least ensure that the Coca-Cola, IBM, or (I don’t know) Valerie Bertinelli you were tweeting with was indeed the real deal. Twitter Blue was (and at the moment, remains) a paid service, mostly for users who want the ability to correct typos — an often requested feature that Twitter has so far resisted making generally available — or enhanced bookmarking features.
On Musk’s Twitter, the blue check becomes a pay-to-play vanity mark that requires no verification and introduces plenty of room for confusion. Already, a number of ‘parody’ accounts have cropped up, taking advantage of purchased blue checks to impersonate well-known businesses and publish tweets that fall well outside brand guidelines. While Musk has claimed he will suspend any account impersonating a business or brand, so far this seems to apply mainly for old school verified accounts impersonating him (to prove a point), not the malicious actors spinning up fake accounts for airlines, tech companies, gaming companies, celebs, and politicians.
That said, the forthcoming paid plan does offer some notable benefits when it comes to reach and engagement. Twitter Blue accounts will (according to statements from Musk and company) be prioritized in search and in the feed itself. Conversely, unpaid accounts are likely to find their tweets buried in the feed, not unlike what happened when Facebook started demoting organic Page posts as a means of forcing increased ad spends. For B2B marketers, the implications are clear: Eventually, you’ll pay or you’ll pay.
Now, some of your corporate profiles (or even some of your key executive profiles) may already have a blue checkmark. Word is, you’ll lose the badge unless you purchase the paid plan. Word is out on whether you’ll be granted a separate “official” badge in its place and, if so, what this will entail.
And some of you may already be paying for the legacy Twitter Blue features at a lower monthly fee. My sense is that your features will remain as-is and you will not be given a blue check unless you upgrade to the new Blue. At some point, I assume old Blue will be retired so that all subscribers are forced to make a yes or no decision on the new plan.
Confused? Yeah, we are too. 😉
Presumably, this will all get cleared up and you’ll want to consider whether there is a role for Twitter in your marketing plan, then detemine if and how Twitter Blue supports that plan (or doesn’t). While I’m generally skeptical of keeping too close an eye on what the competition is doing (as it can lead to copycat content, among other things), I’d recommend you do watch for patterns as this plays out. Certainly, you wouldn’t want to be the only account in your niche without a verification mark (even if the value of that verification mark is suspect at the least).
Otherwise, Stay the Course (For Now)
Every time a social media platform announces a substantial change, people threaten to close their accounts and take their chatter elsewhere. So, of course, the same pattern is playing out here. Power users have been threatening to close their accounts since the acquisition was announced. Some twitterati are flocking to non-profit social site Mastodon as a back-up plan. Despite all this, Musk says membership growth and usage are up. In contrast to the stories about brands halting ad spends, I’ve not heard of any brands outright closing their accounts or pausing organic activities.
While at some point it might become obvious that Twitter is fading fast, for now we’re telling clients to stay the course with organic, unpaid activities. As long as the platform remains viable for the distribution of content for your intended audience, remain active. Stick to your regular content calendar. To the extent you engage directly with members of your audience, continue to do so — with the caveat that your team will need to be extra cautious about interacting with parody accounts, accounts impersonating others, bots and other malicious actors, and (as always) online trolls. We’d have given you the same advice last month (or last year!) but it’s especially salient now, at a time when there’s a heightened risk of mischief or worse.
If you need help or even just a bit of advice on handling these decisions in your own organization, don’t hesitate to give us a shout.
