We’re about to say something that may seem to go against everything a marketing agency with a focus on digital and social should say. Are you sitting down? Because here goes…

Market My Company is – gasp – quitting Twitter. Like, properly quitting. We’re not taking a break and leaving the door open for some on-again-off-again scenario a few months down the track when we’re feeling nostalgic. We’re out. For good.

Here’s why…

3 Reasons Twitter Isn’t The Best Platform for Kiwi Companies

  1. Twitter is fast-paced, which also means it’s time-intensive. Unless you’re tweeting multiple times a day, your profile there will be blink-and-you’ll-miss-it.

  2. Twitter lacks real engagement for business. Unlike Facebook, people generally don’t go on Twitter to engage with brands unless they want to complain about something. It’s also full of spam, auto responders and bots.

  3. Twitter isn’t particularly local-friendly. You need to be marketing nationally to get real results, and the percentage of Kiwis using Twitter is simply too small to make it worthwhile for small businesses.

Don’t get me wrong. For some companies, Twitter yields some great engagement. But in most cases, unless you’re Air New Zealand – or you have a lot of time to invest in building real relationships with Tweeters in your niche – you’re not going to see the same results as you would on other platforms. Hell… even the official Twitter account for New Zealand Rugby (hello – NZ’s national pastime!) has less than 4000 followers. How much luck is the local salon or plumber or accountant going to have connecting with their target market, and then converting those connections into sales? It’s tough, but true.

What We Learned from Our Foray into Twitter

We joined Twitter a little over a year ago, and to date, we have followed 243 users, posted 89 Tweets, and have gained 55 followers. That’s a woeful effort, if we do say so ourselves. So why didn’t Twitter work for us? Because we broke the cardinal rule of social media marketing:

Don’t bother having a presence on a platform if (a) your target market doesn’t live there, and (b) if you’re not going to make the time to engage there.

We tell business owners this time and time again, but as a marketing agency, we’re in a unique position of needing to be across all different types of platforms so we can provide the best advice to our clients. This can be tricky when – as a small business – our team is so busy making sure our clients do all the right things on social, that our own social presence can slip down the priority list.

It’s time for us to practice what we preach, and we’re not sorry. And neither should you be, if you decide a certain platform just isn’t right for you.

How to Quit a Social Platform the Right Way

We’re not the only ones quitting Twitter without a backwards glance. While the company has been shrugging off a decline in share price and a drop off in new users for some time now, the platform’s active community has continued to shrink steadily.

If you’re thinking about leaving a social network you’ve previously used for marketing or community engagement, there’s a right and a wrong way to go about it.

DON’T just forget about the account and let it stagnate. If people do arrive there, it’s not a good look. Instead…

  1. Either delete the account entirely

  2. Or publish one last post, tweet, comment, video or image that lets people know where they should contact you online.

Like this:

Review and Revise Your SM Presence

Social media evolves rapidly, and it’s crucial to keep up. If something isn’t working for you, quit flogging that dead horse. Find something that does work, and invest your time there.

For some of our clients it’s Instagram. For some, it’s LinkedIn. But for most, and undoubtedly for us, it’s Facebook. See you there.