With over 368 million monthly active users, Twitter (rebranded as X) has been used as a powerful social media platform by many businesses. Through Twitter, businesses have engaged with customers and even developed leads – not just for customer-facing businesses, but B2B too.
However, consumers and businesses alike have left the platform in droves after Elon Musk‘s controversial takeover and changes to features like reporting and blocking abusive accounts have negatively impacted the user experience. These moves have reduced the safety of the platform, and many organisations don’t want to be associated with its increasingly unprogressive slant.
On the flipside, many business owners are still seeing success with customer engagement on the platform, thanks to its preference for real-time communications and easy access to business accounts.
Should I be using Twitter?
First, you should address whether Twitter is an integral platform in your social media strategy. Many businesses continue to use the platform as an outlet for customer service, but have chosen to not use its advertising services in order to avoid funding the platform.
Others use it to share important updates – for example, transport companies can easily communicate delays or cancelled services on the platform.
Twitter marketing has taken a nosedive in the past two years, and while this is indicative of the state of the platform, it can also present opportunities. If your competitors have left Twitter, but your target audience remains, it gives you more of an opportunity to engage with them. But it’s important to be aware that this could come with some reputational side effects.
Many businesses have moved to Twitter alternatives, including Bluesky, Mastodon and Threads, to take advantage of the short, timely nature of the platforms without the negative impacts of Twitter’s lack of moderation and potential reputational damage.
To determine whether or not to remain on Twitter, understand if your business’ target audience is still present on the platform. If it is, this gives you the impetus to continue using the platform.
If you’ve decided to remain active on Twitter, here are 10 key features you need to know about.
Make your business clear
Let’s start with the basics. Every element of your Twitter profile should accurately reflect your brand’s purpose and values to help persuade a potential customer or stakeholder to follow you. First impressions count and it’s a chance to make a lasting, positive one.
Make sure your profile photo represents your brand – this typically would be your logo. Remember, this image will appear as your Twitter icon in every public tweet you write and every tweet you reply to. It will also appear in quote tweets featuring your business.
Your header photo is a chance to showcase something important to your business right now. It could be your latest product or an important campaign you’re working on.
Your bio text is where you can explain to people what you do, how you do it, and why they should follow your business. You have 160 characters in your bio, so keep it short and sweet.
There’s also a dedicated space to add your website URL, so users can click through from Twitter straight to your site.
Twitter ads
Like other social media platforms, Twitter allows paid ads.
Twitter Ads enable you to target your ads at specific groups of people. Ads are clearly marked with a “Promoted” icon, and people can follow you or like and retweet your ads in much the same way as organic content.
97% of people focus on visuals on Twitter, so ads with custom graphics are likely to perform better than just plain text.
It’s important to note that Twitter’s ad revenue has declined dramatically since 2022, with brands unwilling to promote their content alongside hate speech and other offensive and unmoderated content creators. It’s up to you to weigh the benefits of advertising – like fewer competitors targeting your audience – against the negatives of advertising on Twitter, like brand perception.
Mobile app promotion
Does your business have a mobile app? Twitter Ads has an option that lets you target your audience through an ad to drive app downloads. You can create a custom image and app description for the ad and target users by location, gender, language and mobile platform.
For example, if your app is available only on iOS devices, you can target users who access Twitter from those devices. The tool also shows you how your campaign is impacting your app downloads purchases and registrations.
Location Spotlight
Location Spotlight is an underutilised feature, but a useful one for businesses of any size with one physical location, or a flagship location like a head office. It allows you to display your business address, hours of operation and contact information underneath your Twitter bio so that visitors to your profile can easily get in touch with you.
It comes with a “get directions” and “contact” button so users can easily find out how to get to your location or get in touch with you.
Scheduling Twitter posts
Got a great idea for a tweet but now is not the right time to send it? Or do you want to post a tweet on the weekend? You can now schedule posts through Twitter directly, rather than needing to go through a third-party app.
When you start drafting a new tweet, you’ll see an icon that looks like a calendar and clock. Click on this, and you can schedule your tweet to share whenever you’d like in the next 18 months. This is best if you’re scheduling one or two posts in advance.
If you are scheduling a complete social plan, we’d recommend an aggregate social media scheduling tool that also allows you to post to other platforms, like Hootsuite. You can also track hashtags in separate columns, schedule tweets in advance and add multiple social media accounts to manage several users at once.
Edit button
For X Premium (previously Twitter Blue) subscribers, Twitter offers an edit button. This is so you can go back and fix typos, add missed tags and more on already-live tweets.
It’s important to note that all Twitter users will be able to see tweets that have been edited in their timeline. It’s clear that the post has been edited, and users can also view the original tweet – so if you’ve made an embarrassing typo or there’s some ambiguity to your post, it might be best to delete it and start again.
Hashtags
It may seem obvious, but hashtags are a great way to increase the visibility of your content beyond your own followers.
You might latch onto trending topics to contribute to the conversation or promote content around a national awareness events such as #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek. Click into the “explore” tab to the left of your timeline (or represented by a magnifying glass at the bottom of your app on mobile) for some inspiration to see what people are talking about.
You could also create your own hashtags to draw attention to your brand or events you are holding.
A good tip is to only use hashtags that are relevant to your content and limit how many you are using. The more you use, the less likely people are to interact with your content – it can be seen as spam by people and the Twitter algorithm!
Photos, gifs and polls
Twitter allows you to add up to four photos to a post. You can also create graphics to add to your tweets.
Using photos and GIFs in your tweets is a great way to connect with followers. Twitter has a built-in GIF keyboard – you simply search for a keyword and choose the clip that best suits your tweet.
Twitter polls are also one of the best ways to get feedback from your audience and get people engaging with your profile. Elon Musk had originally planned to limit polls to only premium (previously Twitter Blue) users in 2022, but after significant backlash from users, this change didn’t go ahead.
It’s simple to set a poll up. hen you compose a tweet, click the “add poll” icon that looks like a horizontal graph. Type your question into the main “compose” box, then enter your first poll response option into “choice 1” and the second option into “choice 2”. You can list up to four answer options in your poll, and each option can be up to 25 characters. The poll stays live for 24 hours by default, but you can change that timeframe if you prefer.
Live tweets
Live tweeting is a quick way to get a topic trending on Twitter. Essentially, it’s when a user tweets their reactions to an event as it happens, whether it’s entertainment or breaking news headlines.
If you hold an event and want your attendees to live tweet about it, it’s a good idea to create your own hashtag for the event and share it with people so they can spread and follow it.
When you’re live tweeting or using multiple tweets for the same topic, make your individual tweets responses to the original tweet, creating a Twitter thread. This makes it easier for users to follow the entire conversation, because these individual tweets will be interconnected.
Twitter spaces
Twitter spaces offer the opportunity to have live audio conversations on the platform. Spaces are public, meaning anyone can listen in and request to contribute. Many Twitter communities, like supporters of certain football teams, use Twitter spaces frequently.
Up to 13 people at one time can speak in a space, but the host can choose who can speak. If you’ve set up a space yourself, you are the host .
Spaces can be a great opportunity to talk through interesting changes in your sector or to solicit feedback from your customers.
The Polymedia verdict
If you choose to use Twitter for business, now you have a clearer idea of how these Twitter features can work for your business. However, we have recommended against using Twitter for many of our clients due to concerns around unmoderated content and the potential damage a Twitter presence – particularly a paid X Premium/Twitter Blue one – can do to your brand’s reputation. Business PR strategies and media relations can be negatively impacted through association with Twitter.
Verified accounts were once a tool that let you know a person – for example, a celebrity or politician – was who they said they were. Now, verification can be bought, which takes away the authority of the blue checkmark.
With that said, Twitter can still be a valuable tool for your business. Many content creators and news and media organisations continue to share their content on the platform because it’s still heavily used as a breaking news site. Additionally, supporters of a range of sports – including football and cricket – continue to use the platform to talk about their teams in their Twitter communities.
If you’re not sure where to start with using Twitter, or other social media platforms for your business, we can deliver social media training. Get in touch with our team at [email protected].
