X’ing Out Twitter
Should Brands Embrace Twitter’s Rebrand to X?
Building a brand can be a difficult and tedious task for businesses small and large. It takes various resources, understanding who your product or service is for, and creating consistent, high-value content that engages your customers and encourages them to buy.
After much time, money, and marketing, you grow your business and develop trust with your target audience. They believe in your brand, they connect with your brand’s purpose, and they advocate for what you have to offer.
Now, what could possibly go wrong?
Let’s take a look at Twitter. After Elon Musk bought Twitter, the platform experienced many changes to features, like the blue checkmark becoming purchasable and a major increase of the character limit, which seemingly ignores the selling point of short-form text on the app.
But the biggest change to Twitter was its recent—and spontaneous—rebrand to X. From the logo and bird imagery to the language users grew accustomed to, X eliminated it all.
As effective marketers, we have to adapt to all developments in our practice, especially when such an unprecedented event occurs that has us wondering whether X still holds any value left for brands.
X is Still the Place for Breaking News
Twitter has always been the best social platform for breaking news. When a major story breaks, it tends to garner a lot of attention, and fast, due to the ease of sharing a tweet. If you like, retweet, or reply to a post, you instantly bring it to your followers’ feeds.
With enough mentions of a certain phrase, keyword, or name, X still organizes high engagement topics into a list of trends. Whether it’s world news, politics, or news of a celebrity’s passing, X’s trending tab is a hard feature to beat because it shows us what everyone is talking about.
Lacking a trending tab is one of the reasons why Threads has struggled to overtake Elon Musk’s Twitter, despite its seemingly friendlier and more welcoming online environment. Even as the fastest growing platform ever, Threads is failing to retain its user base, having lost over 80% of daily active users.
Brand-Customer Relationship on X
Have you ever ordered fast food and felt unsatisfied about the service, or waited on hold for hours trying to make a return?
You probably thought Twitter was the best way to get an issue resolved, but why? The answer is quick customer service. With how prevalent social media has become, brands want to quickly respond to any complaint that comes their way on social media because it could spread just as fast.
This is another leg up X has on the competition; companies can build strong relationships with customers through direct, high-quality service. Remember: Twitter is all about real-time conversations, and it takes a minute for someone to post a negative review or experience that others will see.
When brands practice social listening to catch negative posts, they are able to move the conversation to a direct message, or DM.
Another feature Threads does not currently have.
Where Does X Stand?
While Threads was supposedly the Twitter killer, it turns out what ended Twitter was Elon Musk himself with the rebrand into X. Throwing away years of brand recognition, loyalty, and trust is not the ideal way to go about rebranding, but it seems like Musk wants X to rival Meta’s platforms.
It’s ambitious, but his goal is to push X to become an app for everything. This would explain expanding the character limit, essentially allowing users to write blog posts like LinkedIn. He has also begun paying creators for their high-engagement content.
So, should brands stay active on X or even begin a social presence there? It all comes down to your company’s goals and whether your target audience is still there.
Always follow your audience, because they’re the ones likely to do business with you. They are used to the level of humor that Twitter content has presented to them, whereas brands are still trying to find their tone and build their strategy for Threads.
X Marks the Spot for Meerkat
If you’re still unsure if a presence on X is right for you and your brand, Meerkat Media Group has you covered! With experience in ecommerce, hospitality, food, and more, our team can help you reach the audience you want in the way you want by staying in the know on all things social media. Contact us today for more information on taking your digital marketing to the next level.
