I’ve had a strange relationship with Twitter my entire career.

Although I am aware of its benefits, they’ve never felt sufficient enough to recommend using it. The rise of fake news, spam accounts, and overall negativity on the platform haven’t made it a worthwhile business investment for the clients I’ve worked with. Over and above that, Twitter is so far behind it feels as though it fell asleep in 2015 and hasn’t smelled the roses since.

Using Twitter to drive our client’s social media presence has taught me many things. The most important being that unless you're a news or media outlet, a politician, celebrity or sports star, you'll put in maximum effort for minimal ROI.

If you’re thinking of adding Twitter to your social strategy, I would say go for it and experience it for yourself. But this is what you’re going to find out:

You’re about to compete with 500 million tweets.

Yes, you read that correctly. Twitter sees at least 500 million tweets get posted daily. And while we’re not seeing all of those tweets on our feed, its users follow 700 odd pages on average.

Unless you’re Nandos or Donald Trump, I just don’t see brands successfully competing with that. We, as an industry, are constantly talking about ways to reinvent the wheel, break through the noise, showcase individuality. As I see it, the road to getting noticed is long and winding unless you’re willing to invest the effort and money.

Twitter is an investment.

I mean it when I say this, you can’t post on Twitter four times a month and expect to get results. Twitter is renowned for its fast-paced, bite-sized environment, meaning that brands are having to tweet six times per day just to see incremental growth.

While there is a character limit, can you imagine having to conceptualise at least 126 posts per month, over and above the content you’re creating for your other social channels? If I had to create 126 posts only to receive a 0.05% engagement rate, I would reconsider my priorities.

Paid media results.

One of the more prominent benefits of Twitter is its affordability. Twitter is less competitive than Meta and LinkedIn, and thus, cheaper to reach your target audiences.

However, if you look past the surface, the reason for this is that you’re looking at significantly smaller audience sizes. The platform only has 396.5 million users, compared to Facebook with 2.2 billion.

In the grand scheme of things, you are able to allocate less budget to the platform, but that budget would make a world of difference somewhere else.

You won’t escape the negativity.

The primary reason I deleted Twitter years ago is due to the negativity that is bred on it. I couldn’t get away from the racism, the judgement, the war, the politics and the gossip.

In fairness, they have set up various elements to combat these issues. For example, people are now prompted to read articles before retweeting them to limit the spread of fake news, and privacy controls have been included to limit who can comment on your posts.

However, as innocent brands looking to make a difference in the digital world, this type of environment opens us up to significantly more negative commentary compared to other platforms. Sadly, this is the mindset we have to consider and work with when trying to make it in a place like Twitter.

Twitter features and tools are so far behind.

There’s much one can discuss within this subcategory of why you should cut Twitter from your strategy. Other than the fact that audience analytics are non-existent and performance data is severely limited, Twitter simply is not a platform with the capability, or the willingness, to innovate.

For example, Twitter recently released its “Fleets” tool, which as we know it, is called Stories. Yes, my friends, Twitter is only introducing this tool to its platform five years later!

Did you know that you also can’t edit tweets once they’re posted? The platform’s reasoning is to retain that “SMS-type” of environment, which in itself is a very outdated thought process. But, I’ve also read that its to keep people, specifically politicians, accountable for their opinions and actions.

In conclusion.

Between the negativity, its features and tools, and the time and effort it takes to build a successful Twitter account, it should be clear why it’s time to cut it out of your social media strategy.

As marketing professionals, we know that quality supersedes quantity, and the same applies to your ad placements. A social strategy doesn’t require you to be available at every touchpoint to succeed, and a good strategy will highlight where your best opportunities exist.

That’s what we’re all about here at Platinum Seed. Our unique and distinct outlook on the industry, business, and everything in between is what sets us apart. Our desire to question everything allows us to develop a 360-degree view of our projects, leading us to even stronger results. If you're looking for some guidance on how to kick start or expand your brand adventure, contact us at hello@platinumseed.com.