Twitter is No Longer Social Media—What It Means for Your Brand

This is your digital marketing coach , and this is Neil Schaefer .

For those of you that are longtime listeners , you know that I like to divide these up between expert interviews and my own thoughts based on my own client work , work on my personal brand or whatever I think needs to be said , and this is something that's actually needed to be said for quite some time , but I didn't have the data to back it up .

But now I do . So here we go . Twitter is no longer social media . What I would call Twitter instead is political media , and I think a lot of people might have thought about this , but nobody is talking about it . So I want to be the one to talk about it Now .

As you know , I steer very clear politics and I am by no means saying I am on one side of the political spectrum or another , but I use social media for business , for networking , right , and I like to connect with other creators , other businesses in the space , follow their articles , engage with them and engage with influencers . What have you so ?

On a LinkedIn , on a Facebook , on an Instagram , on a TikTok , I am able to do that , and on those social networks we have algorithms , and while a lot of content creators complain about algorithms , the algorithm doesn't have any emotions . The algorithm is not programmed based on biases .

The algorithm just wants to show the ideal content to the ideal person , and it is our job as content creators to be able , even whether a business or a person , to be able to give the algorithms the right content for the right people , so that our content is displayed to the right viewer . Right ?

I truly believe the algorithms are always looking for content to show everybody , and that's why people can come out of nowhere and become pretty big content creators overnight . We've seen this lately with YouTubers who started talking about AI , and a lot of people were looking for information .

They were there first , and now they have subscribers literally in the hundreds of thousands . So I mentioned this because this is the way that social networks normally work . You have a for you feed , and TikTok is a great example of a for you feed that is really tuned in to what you're interested in . Right ?

It doesn't seem to veer off it whether or not you're following someone , and I think this is the key thing that TikTok introduced . Was this era of recommended media , that it is introducing you to content that it has a pretty good idea you think you'll like . Youtube also does this .

In fact , we can see that Google has always been doing this , trying to understand your search intent , what you're looking for . So now we have Twitter , and I still refuse to call it X . Obviously it's calledX today .

Twitter , as you know , if you've been a longtime listener of this podcast , twitter has always generated the most or second most traffic to my website , neilschafercom , consistently since the early days and even up until last year , it still was number one .

Last year , I believe I don't have the date in front of me but I believe it was surpassed by Pinterest , as Pinterest stopped introducing so many videos , realizing a lot of its users still prefer static pins , and started introducing more static pins . And I will say that sometimes algorithms do have biases towards content formats . We see this with LinkedIn polls .

Right , there was a time when they really wanted everybody to engage with polls , because everybody was engaging with polls until it was too much , and then people started pulling back and the algorithm pulled back and then they introduced something else . So , yes , there are biases , but not in the actual content itself , until we come to Twitter and now X .

So what's happened with Twitter is that for some of you , you might've seen it several months ago , after Elon Musk bought it out , but when you went to your home feed , you saw all these tweets from people you didn't follow , so you had a For you page that was automatically created .

So , instead of seeing the people that you follow , you immediately were seeing a For you page , and a lot of people were confused , like my wife included , and I had to explain hey , this is like it's like a For you page on TikTok , and I think that you know Elon was definitely trying to mimic what you see there of recommending content to you .

But that's where the similarities end , because the content that was being recommended inevitably came from Elon Musk himself , or content about his companies SpaceX , tesla , things that I do not follow , nor have I ever showed interest in , whether it is a content creator or content around those subjects yet they are still shown .

Imagine if you were on Facebook and even if you don't follow Mark Zuckerberg , all you saw were his posts in your For you feed . Or the Chinese owners of ByteDance all you saw is their content in your For you feed . I still remember and I talk about this a lot in my books and my speeches of visiting Facebook headquarters .

It's got to be like a decade ago and they were saying , right after they bought out Instagram , when Instagram didn't really have its own little office yet , and they were saying look , the newsfeed is the lifeblood of our company . Once people start tuning out of the newsfeed , we've lost the battle .

We become a MySpace , we become a Sun Microsystems , which is why if you read digital threads when you leave the Facebook headquarters , or at least back then , they still maintain the old Sun Microsystems sign as a reminder to every employee not to become a dinosaur in the industry .

But Twitter's a different beast because , even though I show no interest in these topics , it continues to show these topics . It continues to show trending topics that are related to , I think , less of what I'm interested in or what are trending and more of a bias in the algorithm .

And the bias is clearly a political bias , for lack of a better word , because even if I engage and I've been experimenting with this the past week I've been overly engaging with the other side of the political spectrum and , regardless of showing the algorithm this interest , I am still seeing posts in my feed from the absolute opposite type of content .

I'm still seeing posts from Elon Musk , donald Trump , marjorie Taylor , greene , and if you're a fan of them , that's awesome . Like I said , I am not on social media for political reasons whatsoever . I'm on it for business , I'm on it for networking . These are conversations that I don't want to see on my feed . I see enough of it in the news , right ?

I talk about it with my friends , with my family . It's just not the place for me . But no matter how much I instruct the feed , I just can't get rid of it . It's interesting because Elon also had this new rule a few months ago that even if you block someone , they can still see your profile .

So you can block their content from not appearing in your feed , yet they can still see you if they find you and want to find you . So it's turned into a weird place and I think after the elections , I've seen this accelerated . I've seen this accelerated . I've seen this type of content and I look in my For you feed of this very political content .

People that I've never heard of that are one-sided . They have the blue checkmark because you can buy it . They have tens of thousands , if not hundreds of thousands of followers . They don't have , like , a LinkedIn bio .

Who knows how they acquired these followers , but there's a lot of people like that , and it brings me back to the days of , like fake followers on Twitter and bots , and I thought we were trying to get rid of that , but I see more and more of this , right . So , from a business perspective , right , this is not a political podcast .

I'm not trying to take one side or the other . I'm trying to give a very , very objectionable perspective on what has happened there . But , inevitably , if the algorithm is biased towards political content , well , what happens to our business content ? What happens to people that aren't interested in it ?

Well , they're either going to tune out , like my friends at Facebook predicted .

Many years ago or you can keep doing what you're doing , but your visibility for your content is inevitably going to go down because the political conversations that I strongly believe , those that operate Twitter really do it as a mouthpiece of just seeing the content that is in the for you feed .

That that is the strategic direction , the strategic bias of the algorithm , that it has become political media .

It is no longer social media , and someone has to say this , and I'll be the first to say this , Even if you agree with what others are saying , the business content that you're publishing right , that your brand is talking about , is going to lose visibility . Now , Twitter still remained as my number two platform throughout the year .

I was posting less on Twitter , but I was still posting . But before I recorded this , I had a hunch that if I say it's true and I've been posting the exact type and amount of content , same frequency on Twitter for the last several months , at some point I'm going to see a decline . So I already saw the decline from number one to number two .

But lo and behold , I go into December and January and now both LinkedIn and Facebook are generating more visitors than Twitter .

And that , my friends , I want to say it's a first , I mean , with 220,000 followers on Twitter , that is definitely a first , Understanding the way the Facebook algorithm works and the fact that I am not posting personal , I'm not on my personal profile , I'm not publishing blog content , right .

The only way that people are getting to my content is either through my Facebook page , which doesn't get a lot of engagement , or they are finding you know other ways , through user generated content , other people talking about me . But nevertheless , right , If Twitter goes to the number four position , it begins , from my perspective , to be a marginal platform .

Right , and the reason why I prioritize this ? Because I saw the ROI , I saw the traffic , I saw the conversions in terms of you know , people contacting me for inquiries , what have you ? But now that it's at this point , I can now confidently say it's time to wind down Twitter .

Now , I will still be on there at a very , very minimal , not spending a lot of time there . Obviously , I've done my data experience , I have the information I need to prove this point right , and I don't like to be part of someone else's political machine , regardless of what side they're on . So I choose to really well disconnect for their greater part .

Now there's a lot of people that have disconnected from Twitter . They've gone to Blue Sky , They've gone to Mastiodon , They've gone to Threads and , to be honest and I am on Threads should follow me there , Neil Schafer , obviously but none of those platforms come anywhere close to what Twitter was in the heyday .

And I know , yes , there's some great people there what have you . But from a business perspective , this is a digital marketing podcast . Right ? I am telling my clients today , you do not need to be on X . In fact , you shouldn't be on X , because you're just not going to get the visibility . Twitter ads I've already thought .

You know , since they made this major shift in the advertising platform about a decade ago , I used to see better ROI on Twitter than I did on Facebook . Well , those days are long gone too . So I think the value of Twitter for businesses is very , very small right now . Should you be on blue sky ? Should you be on mastiodon ? I don't think so .

Should you be on threads ? Yeah , I mean , I would be on threads as much as I'm on X . I would have a very , very minimal presence there .

But I'll tell you what all the time , if you spent any time on Twitter , you can now spend that time on platforms where there are more people , where you can have deeper conversations about broader topics , right , Relating to business and relating to networking , or whatever you're doing on a LinkedIn , on a Facebook , in Facebook groups , right On Instagram , even on

TikTok . So that my friends is . My recommendation is the time invested in X . You invest it in the other platforms , you invest it in the content platforms , you invest it in the content creation , you invest it in engaging with people , the creative side of marketing that AI cannot replicate . And I want to keep this real , simple and short .

Right , If you've been on X , there's no reason to like completely unplug .

I would keep your profile there , keep you know , keep publishing content there , but I would really monitor how well or how not well that content does over time and make a decision Because at some point , if the way the platform is running continues , you know it may be a platform because it's no longer social media , political media .

It may be a platform that you just don't want your business to be associated with or you yourself personally associated with , Because , remember , as people , as businesses , we are all here on earth to make this a better place when we leave At least I am , and therefore all of the actions that I do add up to that .

If I am on that platform , is it in some way helping the world becoming a better place ? And if I don't think that's happening , then I am going to unplug . And this is a conscious decision that every person with a moral backbone , every business that has a mission statement , a culture , a policy , you choose where to spend your time .

You choose what content you want to upload to the platform , which then gets fed into their AI . Inevitably . You have a conscious choice in this . So wherever you publish content , wherever you spend ad money , you are basically investing in that platform , and that's where we all , at some point , need to make a decision on all of this .

So for me , after these data experiments and then seeing the actual data of Twitter dropping below that , which means there's just not much business ROI remaining , for me the decision is easy I am going to just shift more and more time , more and more energy to the big three Facebook , linkedin , instagram .

Funny story I just upgraded my iPhone pro to a 16 from a 15 . And obviously , after upgraded , I can no longer download the TikTok app , so I can still publish the TikTok . I haven't tried to access it in the web . I don't think I can either . I just can't engage if you engage with my content there .

So if that's you , I'm really sorry , but hopefully I'm still able to publish there . You'll have to tell me . But yeah , I just want to lay it out there because I think it needs to be said , the air needs to be cleared . And it's funny because I was in chat GPT .

I uploaded the titles of the last year of episodes and I asked chat GPT hey , what are some episodes that , if I am a listener to the your digital marketing coach podcast that I haven't covered ? What are the content gaps ? Right ?

And so I had a laundry list of topics I was thinking of covering today from that conversation , but because I wasn't inspired to talk about anything else until just the last 24 , 48 , 72 hours on X made me think you know what ? This is a topic that needs to be talked about .

This will probably be my last episode on X , right , and you'll still see me blogging about Twitter on my blog , because there is still search demand and I still want to educate people . But in terms of the hot digital marketing topics , you will not see in my newsletter any news about X .

You'll not see , you know , on this podcast , me really talking about X , because right now it is not in my recommendations of best practices for channels where you or your business should be investing your time , your energy and your ad budget . So what do you think ? Do you agree , disagree ? I would love to hear from you .

Feel free , you know , take a screenshot of this podcast , tag me , write a review . You know , whatever , I really want to make this a conversation because sometimes when you go out on a limb , maybe I'm not going out on a limb , maybe you're all green , you're all not in your head , maybe you're all saying , neil , what are you saying ?

I don't know , but I won't know until you let me know . So I'll be really curious to know what you think . Please , like I said , tag me , neil Schaefer and all the socials , neil , at neilschafercom , you can email me . You can also go to neilschafercom , slash contact and send me a message over the old contact form .

But that's , it for another episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast . This is your digital marketing coach , Neal Schaefer , signing off .

While you're there , check out Neil's digital first group coaching membership community If you or your business needs a little helping hand . See you next time on your digital marketing coach . Digital .