Love him or not, everyone can agree that Elon Musk’s time as head of Twitter has been an interesting one. For many years, the social media platform has been playing catchup versus the likes of Facebook and Instagram, with a fraction of both the audience and marketing dollars that advertisers have allocated to digital advertising.
Although the majority of Musk’s recent controversial decisions have alienated both users and advertisers, this week he announced that tweets will now include a public “view” count alongside likes and retweets.
Although Twitter has provided basic analytics in the past, this is the first time those metrics have been made public for non-video content. The company claims that this is to support the idea that Twitter is an active platform – which it is. 368 million people worldwide login to Twitter in December 2022. But Musk’s announcement also showcases one of Twitter’s major problems – it lacks engagement.
Twitter’s Engagement Problem
Through my years of experience running social media marketing campaigns, Twitter has always fallen behind its competitors in creating actions – whether it simply be a like or an actual click to your website. Facebook has ten times the audience, and surveys suggest that it’s users are more active than those who tweet.
A Facebook post will reach more people, have higher engagement, and generally perform better than a tweet. For businesses with small advertising budgets, it’s a no brainer to pick a paid Facebook ad over Twitter for most campaigns with goals beyond simple reach and awareness.
By making view numbers public, small businesses can learn from others about what makes a good tweet. And for a platform that struggles with delivering a clear ROI, it’s a step in the right direction of accountability.
Twitter as a Tool for SEO
One of Twitters core strengths is it’s ability to be indexed by search engines like Google. This makes it an incredibly power tool to build a proper SEO strategy. A properly crafted tweet with the right keywords hashtags and a link back to your website can lead to long-term benefit by making your website rank higher on search.
Let’s Talk Tweets
Interested in making your Tweets work harder for you? Contact us today and let’s talk about your social media strategy and how to optimize and align it for your business goals.
