Leaving Twitter's chaos behind

Honestly, I resisted writing about Twitter this week. But the chaos engulfing the platform is accelerating at a rate of knots, so it's time to ask the question - should brands and businesses be getting off Twitter?

Here's what we know so far, following one week of Elon Musk being in charge as owner-CEO. He's planning to refrain from a ban on advertising as previously mooted. Vine will apparently be resurrected . Verification will be open to anyone willing to pay $8 a month . A whole bunch of senior execs have left while rumours of job cuts continue to swirl. Musk's acquisition coincided with a massive rise in hateful content on the platform.

I've probably missed something, but it makes me wonder anew how much chaos one platform can take.

One thing we have yet to see, perhaps surprisingly, is any brands pulling a Lush and making very public announcements about leaving Twitter. Most agencies are likely advising clients to take a watching brief - it's too soon to decide about their future on Twitter. But previous similar scenarios, such as the Facebook advertising blackout of summer 2020, show that businesses tend to follow the prevailing winds. It would only take a few high-profile departures to precipitate a mass exodus.

That would be the kind of drama Twitter lives for. But it speaks to the general lethargy around Twitter among brands and businesses that this is an unlikely scenario. The truth is many big brands have quietly let Twitter slip to the bottom of the pile of their social platform suite. Plenty don't proactively tweet but keep their accounts open to deal with customer care issues. Very few "engage" in any meaningful way.

Elon Musk thinks Twitter is a public square for debate and the sharing of ideas. For businesses, it's more like a dark forest full of danger - a place to monitor for developing reputational threats and to stay on top of customer issues. If its relevance continues to dwindle, it doesn't present a communications conundrum to solve. Most comms and marketing teams will likely shrug, and content and community teams will enjoy one fewer platform to write posts for.

Social media platforms don't exist in the way they used to. Elon Musk thinks he can return Twitter to its former glory and is even attempting to hold back the years by bringing Vine back from the dead. But no one can go back, no matter how much money they have. It's just LARPing, pretending it's 2013 (or whatever year you think social media peaked). Pandora's Box is open, and the genie is out of the bottle.

Most social media platforms are no longer social. They're lean-back, broadcast-style entertainment platforms where we have parasocial relationships with the people we follow. TikTok does broadcast social better than anyone, hence why Meta wants to turn Instagram into TikTok.

Social conversation as we knew it now happens in private, more curated spaces. WhatsApp chats, Telegram groups, Discord servers - this is where people share the posts and videos they've enjoyed on other platforms. As Ryan Broderick put it in Garbage Day, the big platforms continue to unbundle - the super-app, the social platform as the world's water cooler, these are outdated ideas that firms chase in vain.

The social media landscape has indelibly changed forever, and the maelstrom of chaos surrounding Twitter means brands and businesses need to consider how their comms approach adapts. What should brands and companies by doing in response to this chaos?

For comms teams, it's worth following what journalists do. Twitter retains an outsize influence relative to its size because the media makes up a significant portion of its most active users. If you want to know about media movers and shakers and what journalists plan to write about, you need to monitor Twitter. Journalists are generally time-poor and a bit lazy. Some will continue to migrate to Substack (and Substack is using Twitter's chaos to aggressively court its users ). Plenty more will carry on tweeting to each other as Twitter metaphorically burns around them. It pays to keep monitoring Twitter through this lens until the journalists move on.

On the point of monitoring, most social media analytics tools rely heavily on Twitter (and Reddit data), with some restricted access to Instagram and Facebook. If you're not already, you need to ensure you're segmenting your Twitter data with audience lists. Broader Twitter conversation provides a highly skewed lens, given that 80% of tweets are written by just 25% of users . Brands and businesses can circumnavigate this by looking at subsets of audiences and stakeholders that really matter to them. Journalists, media outlets, MPs, creators and influencers - get specific and granular to get a handle on what is happening and why.

Brands must also review any ad spend they're allocating to the platform. Elon Musk's acquisition precipitated a considerable surge in hate speech on the platform, as Twitter's nefarious users and trolls eagerly anticipate the easing of content moderation policies. This comes hot on the heels of reports of brand ads appearing next to "child abuse content" on the platform. Twitter's brand has rarely been at such a low ebb, and businesses must consider how they use the platform to support big campaigning moments. There need to be effective processes put in place on how to react and respond in case of any brand safety issues.

If brands and businesses choose to limit ad spend due to brand safety concerns, it does call into question the efficacy of posting proactively on Twitter. That's because organic reach for brands is so low; most businesses we work with see an average organic reach of around 5%. In other words, a tweet posted without ad support will only reach 2,500 people out of your 50,000 followers. If crafting that tweet is relatively low-lift, this may be less of an issue. But if your content and community teams are investing some of their limited resources into writing tweets, it may be time to consider whether the juice is worth the squeeze.

And that is the broader point when thinking about the future of brands and businesses interacting on Twitter - is it worth the effort? Some audiences still matter that use the platform, but it's more complicated (and more expensive) than ever to reach them. If it's time-consuming, costly and potentially risky to invest ad spend on Twitter, brands and businesses definitely need to consider whether it's worth it.

There are plenty of channels out there, presenting far less risk - and far less likely to be changed on a whim by a slightly impetuous owner-CEO.