Musk v Zuck - in the ring and on the web

GM Marketers ☕

We have an absolute shed load of marketing news and content to get through this week, and handily, the two top stories are incredibly SEO-friendly topics: Mr Beast, and Elon Musk’s latest moves with Twitter. Let’s tuck into some Marketing Waffle, shall we? 🧇

Rate limited Twitter 🐦

Well… F***! I think that’s how many of us feel about this initial blindsiding, poorly thought through, and generally bad “new feature” we’ll have to live with.

So what are the suggested rules and parameters for this? Well, at first it was 300 tweets, then 600, then 3,000, and seemingly it’s gone again already?

But, why did this all start in the first place?

Limiting data scrapers isn’t necessarily a bad idea, but it’s almost a necessary evil of having a large social media company. People want data, and they want it quickly, and relatively cheaply: scrape is the way.

What we also saw was the inability to even see tweets without being logged in. Website plugins for Twitter feeds stopped working, and group chats saw their flow of memes slow to a painful halt.

FINALLY, Twitter removing a huge amount of content from the public eye had a massive SEO impact on their business.

“But Waffle, does SEO even matter to Twitter?” I hear you ask.

Well, it’s not exactly major, but even if a smaller amount of their relevant acquisition of eyeballs comes from organic search, you can best believe that left a dent in their wallet. Did it generate a positive ROI for Twitter as a whole? I find that hard to believe… or even really worthwhile for an accessibility and relevancy standpoint.

What are your thoughts? Funnily enough, you can let us know on Twitter (@marketingwaffl), or take our quick poll!

Time for Threads 🧵

While Twitter is struggling, Zuck’s push forward with his new competing idea, Threads. It does look a bit familiar, doesn’t it?

A step change away from being purely imagery based, Instagram will be getting the added utility of Threads, a text based way of sharing opinions and communicating with your audience.

As marketers, let’s give it a go, and experiment with the features and market feedback first on a small scale. There’s good reason for some level of initial hesitance, as there’s something else very familiar about this platform. They LOVE your data.

Yeah… not a great look. However, do the majority of people even look at this or care? We sign of T&C’s every day of the year, and we don’t even read any of it, and people have short memories about Cambridge Analytica…

Personally, I think this could be a winning platform, but it won’t destroy Twitter overnight like the doomsayers say. I think all platforms have their place at this current moment in time, and we need to adjust our work for our clients/employers to market as best as possible with the platforms and tools we have.

You never know, maybe someday you’ll be catching up on the latest Marketing Waffle content via Threads 🤝

Until next time 🧇