With over 255 million active monthly users on Twitter and the majority of the world’s leading marketers using Twitter to build their brands, it’s no wonder that everywhere you turn people are telling you to jump on the Twitter bandwagon with your business. But before you fire off that next tweet, there are many Twitter pitfalls to consider and plenty of reasons why you should stop using Twitter today. Even suggesting that a successful business shouldn’t use Twitter as part of their marketing strategy may sound like heresy to the social media apostles, but hear us out.
Let’s consider many of the reasons you should steer clear of the social media giant, and then stick around to learn one big reason why you might actually want to hang on to that Twitter account.
1. Tweets Get Lost – With roughly 500 million tweets sent per day on Twitter, and most users following several hundred profiles, your tweets can quickly and easily get lost in the chaos. Without any way of weighting the most relevant posts to users as Edgerank does on Facebook, it may feel futile struggle to get your voice heard.
2. Large Amount of Spam on the Website – While the company has introduced a number of features to reduce spam, the amount of spam on Twitter has been steadily increasing over the past few years. With fake accounts flooding peoples’ feeds with bogus products and potentially harmful links, users and businesses alike should be wary of Twitter spam.
3. Poor Source of Traffic Comparatively – The amount of traffic that Twitter drives to a website can be quite low when compared to Facebook and even more so when compared to email. If people aren’t following your tweets to your site and content in large numbers, is the effort worth the trouble?
4. Poor Source of Conversions Comparatively –Twitter has shown to have a much lower rate of conversion when compared to other social media and marketing efforts. Even if users are able to find your tweets, it can be challenging to translate those numbers into customers.
5. Lots of Talking, Less Listening – Much of the energy spent on Twitter comes from individuals and businesses sharing and promoting their own interests, but often times people are rarely taking the time to read or “listen” to what others are saying. As a result, potential customers might miss out on your message, and likewise businesses miss out on learning valuable information from their audience.
6. The Company Runs a Big Deficit – As of last year, Twitter’s accumulated deficit was $418.6 million, and expected to rise much higher. With such a high rising deficit raising questions about profitability, you have to wonder if Twitter is a place where you want to be investing your social media strategy.
7. Celebrities and News Rule – Much of the noise generated on Twitter comes from celebrity buzz and eye-catching news stories, leaving little room for businesses to get their message heard. Competing with an army of celebrities and their fans, not to mention the 24-hour news cycle, can be a daunting challenge to companies of all sizes.
8. Ads Perform Poor Comparatively – While many businesses are using Twitter Ads, promoted accounts and promoted tweets to increase their visibility and conversions, ads on the platform have shown to perform poorly compared to Facebook, Google, and other avenues.
9. Many Twitter Profiles are Automated –To increase their activity on Twitter without all of the hustle; many companies (and celebrities) are turning to automated programs to write and send tweets. Beyond adding to the blanket of noise to compete with on Twitter, automation can also often back fire on a business.
10. People Follow and Unfollow to Get Followers – Many Twitter users follow an account only to quickly unfollow in an (misguided) effort to get more followers for themselves and boost their “followback” rate. This artificial boosting method detracts from the importance of providing valuable content and engagement, and generally just cheapens the value of the platform.
Now let’s consider the one big reason why maintaining an active Twitter account, and wading through all of the above obstacles is worth the effort.
Increasing Brand Strength and Building Links for SEO
Twitter enables you to directly interact with your followers and retweet what they have to say, which can help build trust in your brand. As a more succinct and father reaching form of communication than other platforms, including blogging, you can more easily establish yourself as a reputable authority and generate stronger loyalty.
Twitter is also a tremendously powerful tool for building links for SEO. By leveraging the power of your loyal followers, especially those that are significant influencers, you can build strong SEO links. By establishing strong relationships with your influential followers through strong content and reciprocation, you can help generate great links. When you answer questions via Twitter and help followers out, your generosity is often returned with strong links as well. You can also build partnerships with other businesses related to yours to help build a mutual link-building network. There are a variety of methods to help build links for SEO using Twitter, and each one makes a stronger case for using the platform, as long as you can navigate through the noise.
Have you found Twitter to be useful for your business? Share your strategies for making the most of your tweets in the comment section.
