X: should I stay or should I go?
Since the US election in November clients have been asking my advice about withdrawing from X and other social media platforms.
This question has of course been bubbling since Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 but seems to have come to the boil more recently.
I certainly won’t be the first person to be reminded of these Clash lyrics:
“Should I stay, or should I go now?
If I go, there will be trouble
And if I stay, it will be double
So ya gotta let me know
Should I stay, or should I go?”
I thought it would be helpful to share some of the advice I give to clients in case it’s useful for anybody else. I’m not promising any new hot takes, just some straightforward considerations if your organisation is considering leaving a social media platform.
Before I do, I want to note that there does not seem to be one consistent approach that stands out. That’s true universally and within sectors. This makes it tricky if you’re hoping for a one-size-fits-all solution.
Considerations
What might you consider if you’re wondering about withdrawing from a platform that you’ve used previously? There’s a few aspects you might want to think about:
Audience: which platforms and channels do your audiences and consumers actually use? This is the most important consideration.
Engagement: how does your content perform on the platform you’re questioning? How does this compare to performance on other platforms?
Ethics and values: do the ethics and values of the platform (and its owners) align with your organisational values?
Capacity: particularly for smaller teams, how many platforms and channels can you manage well? A desire to be active on every platform is a problem I see regularly.
Spend: do you support your organic content with paid spend? And if not what impact is this having on your engagement?
Having said there is no consistent approach there is one thing that I notice fairly consistently which is that many clients who seek my advice about whether to retire an X account or not actually have such low engagement on the platform anyway that I end up recommending they could retreat without a fanfare and it not be detrimental to their wider marketing efforts. Of course there’s many many reasons why a brand might see lower engagement on X than other social media platforms, but I’ve seen this scenario so often of late that it’s worth mentioning.
New channels
Whether Threads, BlueSky, Mastodon or something else will become “the new Twitter” I have no idea and I’m not sure anybody else does right now. Time will tell.
Something I am quite interested in is how brands can better use WhatsApp. WhatsApp is hugely popular but seemingly underutilised by UK brands and companies. It’s cited as a top platform in almost every customer research report I read. I am intrigued by the idea of WhatsApp Channels and have recommended this as an option for a few clients in recent weeks.
Ethics
Finally, the brands and organisations taking decisions to withdraw from X for ethical reasons will know that consistency is king when it comes to corporate social responsibility. If your values don’t align with those of X, then under scrutiny you might find your values don’t align with those of Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp), Microsoft (owner of LinkedIn) or various others either even though these tech companies are not necessarily the ones under the spotlight at this particular moment in time. I’m no expert in the ethics of social media companies, or any companies really. This is all just a thought.
Lead image created on ChatGPT