Yaw, Yaw, yaw..you can say what you want about how great Twitter is, how it has changed your life and all it is doing to expose who you are and what you do, but in reality Twitter does not produce enough value for most businesses to feel it is worth the time they spend being on the site.
I have been on Twitter since it launched and have seen all of the ups and downs of Twitter’s popularity. However, over the past three months I started noticing many of my friends, associates and social mediaist have not been visible on Twitter. I was not too surprised to find out why they left since most of the reason are why I have pulled out of spending much (any) time on Twitter.
Recently, I visited with a sampling of my contacts, who are a mix of addicted social media consultants, business owners, C Suite executives and logic sounding traditional marketing types all of whom represent a cross section of mainstream businesses. It was interesting to find out why they left Twitter.
Nearly all of them report they are reevaluating their social media campaigns towards the use of Twitter specifically. This is resulting in all of them pulling out or in the process of pulling back from using Twitter for any purpose. A few report they are only using Twitter periodically to monitor customer service but are looking to Yelp and other sources to get a more credible source of feedback on their product/services.
Is this unfortunate or is it another part of the social networking evolution going through the population of La-La-Land??? Time will only tell. For now, it would serve each of us who use the internet, as part of their business marketing strategies, to hear why these businesses are leaving Twitter. At the very least, it will explain why Twitter is rapidly becoming a ghost town.
Following are the major reasons businesses are leaving Twitter.
Consumer Exodus
The biggest reason many of the mainstream businesses, who just months ago were launching huge Twitter marketing campaigns, are leaving Twitter boiled down to very simple…the consumers are leaving Twitter. Why are consumers leaving? If you have been on Twitter lately it would be easy to see the reason. The platform has turned into a one-way street for self promotion. Plus, the dark side of Twitter is getting darker as more and more of the thrill seekers in life feel posting demeaning replies to posts is fun.
Consumers…the people who buy stuff…are leaving Twitter since most of them are out to find friends, have fun and conversation with other people. What they are finding are people.places and things posting large quantities of links and self promotion posts. So the consumer is asking..why am I spending my time on Twitter when it does not accomplish by goal. The result is they leave. The consumer exodus from Twitter causes many businesses from being on Twitter or spend much time there.
No Validations
The reps I talked to all have questioned if the majority of profiles listed on Twitter are for real people. One stated, “ I have yet to find creditable source to tell me exactly how many of the posts on Twitter represent the people who are in my targeted market.”
Many businesses have done their own studies to find a large portion of their Followers are just fronts for a computer program or for the ‘tire kickers’ of the internet who join Twitter, Follow a trillion people and leave Twitter after a month. Without some certainty in knowing even an approximate number of real people a business actually reaches with their Twitter posts makes justifying the use of Twitter, for any type of business development purpose, impossible to do for most businesses.
There are no credible sources that can validate there are really that many Real People posting or engaging in any of the posts most businesses make. Yes, there are Twitter success stories but for every success story there are 100’s of stories of how unsuccessful and worthless the time spent on Twitter was for businesses.
Troll Haven
Most of the business who hire people to do in-house social networking, or have their celebrated staff post on Twitter, found the amount of time they spent dealing with Trolls, SPAM and unwanted DM was keeping many productive people from doing their jobs of promoting the business. Managing Twitter’s Troll population was of no interest to these business owners. The number of persons, places and things responding to their Twitter posts with links to undesirable products/services was not something they wanted to manage and was causing their business to appear supportive of the links the trolls of the internet tagged onto their posts.
Over half of the people talked to reported problems with strange people filling the Twitter @reply feed with very strange questions and personal remarks towards the person posting their Tweets. Some had started filling their emails servers with Spam. A few reported the personal remarks and stalking of their personal was resulting in employees quitting or legal issues resulting in it costing the businesses more money than it was worth to be on Twitter. Businesses have no interest in being a part of the Twitter byproducts.
Time Killer
Every one of the representatives I chatted with, who left Twitter months ago, all made a comment on the huge amount of time they spent and not having an acceptable level of return towards developing business. Product and Service loyalty was not increased above other levels of social networking the businesses where using. Even when a more personable approach of social media was used on Twitter the amount of new (real) customers accumulated to Follow their Twitter posts did not merit the time it took to accumulate them. All of the businesses these people represented see Twitter as a real Time Killer.
Unprofessional Image
Many of the businesses who hired marketing firms to place their business online were placed on Twitter with the explanation..’You have to be on Twitter to stay in touch with consumers’. This resulted in many business, who really would do better not be on Twitter, were placed on Twitter for the wrong reasons.
In many of the customer feedback surveys they found being on Twitter tarnished their professional image. Many received comments stating how foolish the business appeared amongst the persons, places and things of Twitter who have as unprofessional behavior. Some of the businesses found being on Twitter caused them to lose ground in the development of their brand to the public.
Billboard Mentality
Posting links has always been accepted as part of the benefits of Twitter. In the beginning, pre-2009, posting links on Twitter to web-sites offering a product/service was novel, but as the monkey-see-monkey-do mentality of internet marketing kicked in on Twitter the majority of posts made are just links. The amount of conversation or usable information provided on Twitter was being overwhelmed with the onslaught of promotional link posts. Consumers (or the real people of Twitter) resented dealing with the fire hose of link only posts and just left.
As a result businesses started seeing Twitter as just a billboard for posting a url to anything. Their in-house studies validated their customers were leaving Twitter due to the onslaught of worthless Twitter posts which resulted in these businesses starting to question why they should be on Twitter if their customers or not.
Enough is Enough
Many of the businesses are just not seeing Twitter as a place to promote or market. There is “too much crap for the consumer to wade through on Twitter to see what we offer”.
Even in the sense of using Twitter to post pure promotions most businesses could not find any validation the promotions they posted was being seen by enough people to justify posting it on Twitter. “When your four employees accumulate 7k Followers over one year, post a Tweet-up to give away an iPad and only four people show up, how can I justify Twitter is working?”
They see Twitter as it is..a place for persons, places and things to post links to things of interest to only them and their very close friends who usually are connected to some offline association. “We are seeing a lot of people on Twitter talking to each other about current events or what they ate for dinner, but are not interested in or even reading our posts on Twitter. Why waste our time? Enough is enough!”
So, businesses are saying..enough is enough and moving on to marketing in more traditional and productive venues.
Where is Twitter going? With so many people leaving and those new to Twitter not staying very long, what is the value of Twitter to businesses? Guess 2011 will be an interesting year to see how much longer Twitter can go in the direction it is heading.
I can understand some of the reasons stated, and I honestly don’t think that twitter is really made for all types of business really, at least not to use it to its fullest potential. However, I do think that there are a vast majority of companies that just don’t get what Twitter is. They don’t understand the social aspect of it – that it’s not really a traditional marketing tool at all, but instead a way to build relationships. That doesn’t mean you have to give things away constantly, and it doesn’t even mean you have to directly answer all questions that happen (directing to the most direct resource might work better). Brands need to understand what population of their audience is on Twitter and then customize how they use Twitter to best fit that audience, but also try to twist things up often enough to bring in new audiences.
Sadly a lot of companies think that using bot services to gain followers and to follow others will help – but for most it doesn’t. Twitter works best for the majority of companies if it’s done genuinely, not artificially. That is why it’s called SOCIAL media.
Brands also still want to put numbers on ROI – social media as a whole is very hard to measure in those terms. That’s why they can’t find those numbers.
I would encourage brands to try harder to think outside the box and not rely on industry standard terms and models when it comes to social media. Look at the brands that ARE successful on Twitter and see what they are doing. Try to find businesses similar to yours to compare against also.
Robyn,
Thanks for your response. I’ll agree, Twitter is not for everyone and there are businesses currently using Twitter who just do not get it. However, there are a ton of individuals who also don’t get Twitter as well. The thousands of people posting nothing but links or not responding to replies are causing a lot of damage to Twitter. It is these people who are lobbing posts to Twitter from afar who are running off the businesses I have been talking to.
Believe me, the companies I have been chatting with have hired the best marketing, PR and social networking people who were getting nothing out of any approach they tried. Many of these businesses report contacting the businesses who have declared their Twitter existence a success to find it really was not doing as well as they were hyping it to be. Those companies were pretty open in reporting on how they have to put a smiley face on their efforts to keep their stockholders and investors happy (or kept in the dark that the funds spent for the Twitter campaigns are not making any return).
Just saw yesterday two more of my colleagues announcing their pull out of Twitter. I am sure Twitter will be around but who is left on Twitter will not be who most businesses will want to market to.
Thanks GAHCindy for your response.
Two of the companies I have been talking to represent two of the local TV stations here in Dallas who have pulled back their Twitter presence. The rest represent mostly large corporations.
I can agree, there are many business models who can benefit from the Twitter exposure, however, unless the narcissistic (one-way conversation) attitude of the majority of the Twitter population changes, even the prime candidates for who would benefit the most from Twitter will finally see there are better ways to get the attention of their market.
I’m probably biased here – I’m an unabashed Twitter fan. What you’ve said is absolutely correct, though. Twitter was a very big deal in 2009, but 2010 has seen the digital marketing landscape dominated by two giants – Google and Facebook – with a lot of other action going to Groupon and Foursquare. Twitter has been slow and cautious in developing its “marketing platform”, and they’ve had some false starts.
I think it’s way to early to “count Twitter out” as a marketing platform, though. I’m planning to wait until I see what the analytics from Twitter look like. And I can only assume that the Twitter team has much better front-line data on how they and their competitors for marketing spend are doing than I do.
znmeb,
Thanks for the response. Yes, I am also trying to make sense out of what is taking place recently with Twitter. I am also taking a sideline seat to see what happens and also hope the powers of Twitter hit the streets to find out how people who have left Twitter are feeling. I am sure they will find the solution once they get some REAL feedback and not look at system stats.
Twitter is many things to many people, so obviously some will see great benefit and others will walk away. Spam and weirdness is a problem, but tolerable for now. Personally I’m still finding Twitter useful except for one major point: excessive posting. I’ve unfollowed several twitterers (business & personal) I thought were interesting merely because the sheer number of their messages drowned out everything else. Some folks just don’t know the meaning of restraint.
This article is long on opinion couched as fact. A reference to any real businesses would help make your case.
Thanks Paul,
Yes it would appear that way. Fortunately, I can tell you it is a very comfortable coach. With all the NDA’s I am under I was fortunate to provide what I did. I have found it best validation to any of the claims made out here is to do your own test. I did and it validates what these businesses are saying is happening on Twitter.