For almost everyone across the globe, social media has become a key aspect and the usage of social media is essential for business. The most familiar websites presently are Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Social media platforms have been beneficial to internet users as they serve as the main channel for communication with friends and family and also in digital marketing. All these platforms were on the top and in 2018, it was reported that Twitter faced a drop in the active users per month. This had been reported for a number of reasons, let’s run through a few points about twitter’s decline.
Is Twitter Dying – Reasons for its Decline:
1. Less innovation
Twitter has not presented any fresh changes to date. For its users and posts, there is no addition of flexibility and new features too. For many people, Twitter is just a platform and is the same as it was represented a few years ago.
When a comparison is made with Facebook, a number of updates were made to Facebook from the news feed and many more. Twitter can also be compared with other platforms like snapchat where they had updated the way people communicate with each other.
2. Restriction
Counter-intuitively is considered as the main reason for twitter’s drawback. The users were to face strict limits. The users were permitted to make use of information of just 280 characters. The same limit is still under use with a slight upgrade. The upgrade is that non-text data, images, polls, and videos are not taken into account of the 280 character limit.
We must understand that Twitter is straight forward and similar to other platforms in sharing images, videos, etc. Text sharing can be achieved with the mentioned limit.
3. Obsolescence
Twitter’s platform is nearly at the limit of obsolescence. Though there are many new ways of communicating, twitter still follows the same old way which was followed during the initial period. Ways of communication can be modernized though for a group or for an individual.
4. Abuse and spam
Spam, as well as abuse, had been a key issue for twitter from the start. Twitter had taken steps to enhance and find out spam and in turn, get rid of offenders. But the truth is that their actions were broken and still there are spam accounts found.
Hence hackers have a great chance to get into twitter with fake accounts. Twitter has more chances to be used like bot accounts where the public can be influenced artificially and there is more chance for political messaging.
5. Divisiveness
The main protest against Twitter was that twitter represented itself as a platform for divisiveness. During the US elections 2016, there was a denunciation of twitter for promotion of posts and messages that were divisive. It was suspected that the election results were predicted with this. In 2017 Barrack Obama mentioned that “political affiliation shouldn’t be separated with a tool such as social media”.
The valuable tool for marketing- twitter:
Though, 2015 to 2017 was a decline in profit for the microblogging platform, 2017, as well as 2018, turned out to be a profit for twitter. By 2018, Twitter gained about 336 million users, where statistics show that by 2018 it obtained about 6 million users.
This shows that Twitter is on the right track which is proved by their financials. It is important to note that the raises in Twitter users are international numbers. When you take a look at US users for Twitter, there are about 68 to 69 million users per month in 2017.
Spam account eradication:
The instant financial growth for Twitter has a number of reasons. Twitter had recently laid emphasis on battling the spam and abuse on the network. The API has been updated recently to stand against spam. They also detected about 10 million spam accounts each week.
Also, inactive accounts are monitored and eradicated and hence the accuracy in followers account is enhanced. There is a huge effect after inactive accounts are removed as many users lost their followers up by 70%. So, Twitter is concentrating more on abuse as well as security in a serious manner.
For news:
After the launch of Twitter, it was mainly used by professionals and friends for networking and communication purpose. Presently you can recognize that there are various reasons for which networks are utilized. For example, new stories are now shared as well as commented on twitter first.
It is reported that the news fix is obtained from social media for 11% Americans and 74% Twitter users. This is happening in 2017 and may enhance high in 2018. Hence there is urging for publishers to post on twitter for incentive.
Merits about twitter:
It is also monitored and identified that Twitter is being used for interesting and new things. It is hence important for businesses to post out of the box and high-quality content that grabs others attention. It is also suggested to post video content compared to audio, as videos have the capability to gain more tweets than audio.
The best aspect of twitter is that the ad prices for Twitter have gone down by 50% per engagement. This is hence an opportunity for ads to be utilized.
Paid advertising options:
Similar to Facebook, Twitter is also offering a number of paid advertising options and this helps to grab in new customers and revenue. There are many small brands that have accepted twitter as their free platform so that they can converse directly to their clients.
The platform is also great for marketers to interact and advertise. Customers also gain the facility to access Twitter by means of the tablet, phone for suggestions, concerns, fire questions as well as queries.
Marketer’s tool:
The change in character limit was great news for marketers and also grabbed in more users. Marketers would gain more followers and hence more customers. The main advantage of having more followers is that your content is viewed and shared by many users. Now marketers have about 280 characters of space to use instead of 140 characters. Extra space allows the marketers to present additional slogan for their product or service.
Use of Twitter in Companies:
Though twitter faced a decline in 2017 as mentioned above, there are a number of advantages and features that Twitter has.
Almost all organizations these days hold a twitter account for their associated brand. Employing Twitter account for the organization has a number of benefits. The Twitter account can have an effect on the company in a number of ways as mentioned.
1. Linking with customers
From a personal level as well as the support level, Twitter is linked with the customer. By means of messages or tweets, fans and customers can get associated with the organization. The followers can be updated with the latest news or updates about the organization. These actions would offer a valued feel for the customers and hence their relationship with the organization becomes strong.
2. Marketing purpose
The organization can have many doors for marketing when they hold a Twitter account. Ad space can be purchased by the companies along with “promoted tweets”. This will be visible in others feed, though they follow the company or not. Simple and quick tweets can be sent to followers for promotion or sales on Twitter.
3. Organizations reach is extended
By utilizing twitter the organization’s reach can be extended as the company can link to a new customer base. For the growth of the organization, an extension of the organization’s reach is beneficial. By this way, many users who are unaware of brands or organization can get to know it and may also follow the same.
Advantages of Using Twitter:
Ease in use:
With twitter creating posts for followers is very simple and easy. For a particular message to be posted, must effort isn’t required. Crafting a tweet and posting is simple.
Access and ideas to news:
In order to know breaking news people look into twitter. Twitter is also used as a tool to share ideas with others.
Twitter analytics:
Your impact on the audience can be analyzed and assessed as followers can like as well as share tweets. By this way, your brand can be boosted.
Power of hashtag:
For a particular topic hashtags can be utilized in twitter and also the number of re-tweets can be monitored.
Offline tweetup:
Information can be shared in a particular geographical area by this feature called offline tweetup. Virtual meetups can be arranged and also meetups for followers in a particular area can be arranged with this feature.
Customer service delivery:
Two-way communications are possible with Twitter. There is an opportunity to communicate with your audience by which reputation can be built.
Free account:
With Twitter, a free account can be developed and it is up to the user’s choice to hire someone for managing the account. Promoted tweets can be paid as it can be considered as a pocket-friendly budget.
Automation of tweets:
Tweets can be automated on twitter. The tweets that need to be tweeted can be scheduled to post. This is made possible with the twitter tool.
Self- promotion:
For ones in business, Twitter is the best place to market your brand or service. In order to reach the candidates, users are to employ the usage of social media.
Predict the future:
Almost all Twitter users believe that forthcoming consequences can be predicted based on posts made by people and by their feelings as well as behavior.
Is Twitter Worth It – Twitters Enormous Growth:
Twitter represented a consistent profit of $30.80 following though there were shrinking users. $255 million profit was posted in 2018 of the last three months. When a comparison is made with the previous year it has only $91 million earlier.
Apart from all the hassles and issues, Twitter is growing in terms of new users and holds about 330 million new users. The users are mainly from a marketing perspective. About 85% of medium and small business users choose twitter to be their ideal platform for providing perfect customer service. In order to talk in a direct manner to business, Twitter is a wonderful platform.
Twitter has also agreed that customer service interactions have enhanced to about 250% for the prior two years. Since the ad prices for Twitter are decreasing, there is assured optimistic future for Twitter. As per reports, about 95% of Ad engagements have increased in twitter.
When Twitter is used in an effective manner for business or for any other purpose, it can be a great platform to reap success.
Being conversational:
The platform is being loved by all as users can be as they are in real time. Hence this can be used as an opportunity and followers can be engaged with useful content. It is a good way to acknowledge new users, introduce the brand and also respond to them.
Being in real time:
Getting the content to your audience is very important when it comes to marketing. Hence the utilization of the latest hashtag is very important.
Advertising with videos:
Twitter video ads are the best marketing strategy that can be used for marketing on Twitter. Engagement with the audience can be enhanced by making use of videos.
Conclusion:
Though there were many who claimed that Twitter was dying for many years, the above-mentioned merits and advantages prove that Twitter is on the top. When social media sites are considered, Twitter is one main part of it. Twitter though faced hassles is now on the right track with a number of beneficial factors for marketers and other users.
Presently twitter is being the main source for marketers, news, etc. Hence twitter isn’t dying but still being boosted ahead for more users and more innovations to happen. Run through the sites and get to know the ample useful factors twitter has for its users.