Culture is a beast that feeds on the latest and greatest trends. In order for culture to thrive it must always be moving forward, just like a shark through water, and in the digital age its movement is persistently gaining speed. Business, however, is another story altogether.
Critics of culture and those who obsess over numbers look at engagement booms for new products as being more meaningful than the slower, steady growth of more mature brands. You can see this in the way Snapchat has been treated over the last few years in the media compared to Instagram, or how Instagram was treated before that in comparison to Twitter.
While it is important to stay on top of emerging trends, especially where such things can be applied to your business, there is no need to abandon tried and true platforms of promotion. Just recently a fresh wave of criticism against Twitter came to light, with critics claiming the social media giant had long past its peak and was beginning to slide into the abyss where MySpace and Friendster currently reside. Those rumors, which were never anything more than that, are wrong.
While it’s true that Twitter’s revenue fell 8% last quarter, the drop was smaller than expected and sent the stock up 11% in pre-market trading Wednesday. Twitter also added 9 million new users in the last 3 months, which is the biggest quarter-over-quarter user jump for Twitter since early in 2015; and brings total users to 328 million.
Twitter also recently reported that daily active users are up 14% over the same quarter last year, which mean that users of the service are coming back more often. The reasons for this are numerous and likely tied to the recent election and the aggressive, evolved news cycle that has come from it. Regardless, the fact remains – Twitter still matters.
These numbers tell us Twitter is going to be around for the foreseeable future, but whether or not it is the place to focus your marketing efforts is something you have to figured out for yourself. Every fan base is different, as are the social media platforms they prefer. If your fans are active on Twitter and constantly engaging with your new posts then you should absolutely continue to develop that community. If your fans are engaging you more on other platforms, say Snapchat or Facebook, then you should focus more of your efforts there. Just don’t abandon Twitter altogether.
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