If Your Business Relies on Twitter, Here's What You Can Do Now

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There are 118 million companies worldwide using Twitter, including 70% of small businesses. The platform has experienced a massive rise in popularity since its launch in 2006, scooping up advertising revenue with its unparalleled offering: a large user base of potential customers, real-time direct communication with clients, and low-cost opportunities to build a brand reputation and showcase expertise. 

However, forecasts predict that 32 million users will abandon Twitter within the next two years due to a recent change in leadership and new platform initiatives. This includes some of the world's largest companies, like Volkswagen, Pfizer, and General Mills, who have already suspended advertising on the platform. With uncertainty surrounding the future of Twitter, what options are there for entrepreneurs and businesses who rely on the platform as an efficient and cheap marketing tool?

Transfer Your Twitter Following

Before deciding to ditch or diminish your activity on Twitter, make sure to protect the relationships you have already established. There are several ways to transfer your Twitter following to other sources, particularly your email list, through a Twitter chat, competition, or giveaway.

Hosting a conversation on the platform allows you to position your business as a key player and source of expertise in a relevant area. And by offering a free but credible resource as a part of that Twitter chat, which can be accessed by those who sign up for your mailers, you can turn social media connections into a potential customer base.

Similarly, fun and engaging contest, accessed via a link to a landing page requiring participants to enter their email addresses, can generate a solid mailing list. This is achievable through gated content. Produce good quality, practical, and shareable content, and tweet it out, but block access until visitors enter an email address.

You could also set up a referral program that asks existing customers to recommend your brand to a friend in exchange for rewards such as freebies or discounts.

Obtaining direct access to someone’s inbox is a reliable way to make sales, allowing you to bypass the shifting popularity patterns of social media. 

Diversify Your Social Media Presence

Despite the uncertainty of Twitter, social media still has a lot of sales potential and there is an ever-growing range of options for the technologically savvy.

The go-to site for businesses has always been LinkedIn. To take advantage of this influx away from Twitter, optimize your LinkedIn profile to target the professional audience you want to reach. Then, use LinkedIn's advanced search feature to find that bespoke audience. 

You can set up a LinkedIn group and ask your target customers to join, making sure you give them a reason to connect with you. For example, share your own articles or those from reliable sources and encourage a lively discussion on the subject matter. 

It’s worth researching how various social media channel algorithms work so that you can aim to gain as much traction from your posts as possible. For example, the best day for Instagram posts is Tuesday, and videos drive higher engagement on Facebook. Constantly updating your channels with fresh posts is a good way to retain relevance. 

Video and VR: Follow the Trends

You can also show off your company's expertise while generating leads and subscribers through YouTube tutorials. Creating valuable and practical "how to" videos will increase the professional standing of your business. YouTube also has a tagging feature that suggests using keywords, which naturally drives traffic to the video. 

To target the younger generation, you need to know what they are about. Gen Z-ers, those born between the mid-to-late 1990s and the early 2010s, have a lot of spending potential, but specific marketing preferences. Research shows that they prefer video over all other media and prioritize user-generated videos over promotional ones. This is because they value authenticity and relatability, looking for brands that align with their beliefs. This often revolves around diversity, transparency, and social responsibility.

Use TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram to show off your company’s ethical side — but remember, this generation has grown up sifting through reams of internet content and people have notoriously short attention spans. Effective videos will be less than a minute long (you have mere seconds to hook your viewers), they will have a single, snappy, succinct message, and they will be fun and engaging. Look to some of the genre’s most popular content for inspiration.

It also makes sense to keep an eye on developments at Facebook/Meta, which has started experimenting with virtual reality (VR) advertising. Advancements in VR tech could transform advertising as we know it. 

Market Offline 

Don’t forget that advertising and brand awareness can occupy the real world as well as the digital. Events — your own or those you sponsor — are a great way to make connections and build a client base, especially if you can integrate your product or service into promotions.

You can also think about how your product or offering itself can support your company’s message and branding. Get inspired by some of the most innovative offline marketing campaigns of the year. For example, Lego has released Braille bricks for visually impaired children, and Corona has installed vending machines in countries including Mexico and Italy, where you can get a beer in exchange for plastic bottles. 

Wherever you go in a post-Twitter landscape, ensure you know who you are targeting and how to tailor your content to those prospective customers.

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