What are the alternatives to twitter?

Is Elon Musk trying to kill Twitter? Looking at his actions you probably could draw that conclusion. Even if he doesn’t, people are leaving the platform because they don’t agree with what he’s doing and yet at the same time the platform is reporting record numbers of users. Maybe they are simply there to watch the show - I guess we will see in due course. Surely the richest person has a plan and knows what he’s doing?

If the worst happens, those users and all that attention is going to go somewhere. But where?

Many businesses depend on twitter and have built significant followings they rely on.

So, it’s an important question. Where are those users going to go?

Twitter has many use cases and so businesses use the platform for different parts of their businesses.

If the worst happened or even if users starting moving in large numbers to other planforms it is possible a that the Twitter user community will fracture with users migrating to platforms that best meet their specific needs. It’s unlikely to be the case that all users will simply switch to Instagram for example.

Knowing where your followers are likely to end up will allow you and your business to think ahead and start to think about adapting to a new platform.

In this post I’ve added some questions to interact with. Just to make it a little more fun…..😀

So let’s take those use cases one by one.

1. A source for news

Yes, Twitter had become the main source for news for many people. All the big news outlets are on there as well as the alternative media. It unlikely those using Twitter for news will move to the large players such as Facebook or Instagram - their news offerings are relatively poor compared to Twitter. There are a number of smaller alternative platforms that could fill this void. Mastodon being one of them which has a very similar feel to Twitter.

2. Ask a question to a pooled knowledge base

Twitter can be used as a pool of knowledge users can draw on. If people have a good following, they can draw on the pooled knowledge of that following and ask basic questions.

• What’s the best restaurant on London’s Southbank?

• Would you like me to write a blog about x or y?

• What do people feed about Elon Musk taking over twitter?

For these use cases are there are some better alternatives for users. In any case, for those with small followings it was often difficult to get a good volume of answers.

Google allows you to ask the community which suggests you’d get an answer in 20 mins. This only really applies to specific places such as a cafe or attraction. It doesn’t work so well on questions such as “where’s the best place is to see Christmas lights in London”. I guess there is also the good old Google (or any other) search engine, but you always feel like you’re being pushed towards certain things Google wants you to see with that.

The other emerging route is Mastodon although I’m not sure there are enough users get for it to be at critical mass.

Instagram could play a good role here. Again, useful to have a good following as was the same with Twitter.

3. Industry news and articles

Twitter had become a place for sharing industry news and articles. Communities had built up around specific subjects or industries.

The natural place for more industry related articles would be LinkedIn. LinkedIn has traditionally been dominated as a Business-to-Business platform so can seem daunting for other groups. However, in the past few years since the start of the pandemic it has become more of a platform for individuals. Just without the holiday snaps!

If you can get over the constant showing off on LinkedIn, it can become a really useful resource. You can find dedicated groups to join and share within those groups.

4. Service messaging

Twitter has the benefit of working as a type of instant messaging if you want to get a message out there quickly to an audience or customer base. For example, train companies use Twitter as one of the main ways for communicating with customers.

For these users, Instagram could be a viable alternative but there would need to be training put in place for teams to cope with the different platform.

Hopefully, this post has prompted a few thoughts on how to build resilience in your social media strategy. This will give you the security to sit back and watch the Elon Musk soap opera from a safer place!

What’s next?

I’ve half written three newsletter posts and I need to decide which one to take forward next week to share with you. What would you like to about first?

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