The past few months have seen an exodus from X (formerly known as ‘Twitter’) for several reasons, including controversial updates of the website’s terms of service. The amount of users leaving X for other platforms provides a new opportunity for smaller businesses to build a following in an up-and-coming online community.
The new Bluesky platform has proven to be a popular migration point for those leaving X. Having only gone public in 2024, it offers similar features to X while styling itself as an independently run website. Between October and November last year, Bluesky surged from 13 million users to 20 million users, and the numbers have kept growing further.
One must ask the question – is this opportunity worth taking for a company?
Visibility is the real prize of social media. Having a social media profile establishes an online presence, and it helps to improve both authority and credibility. It can benefit your business’s website with increased traffic. No matter how strong your SEO game and keyword optimization is, this added visibility builds more traction in search results and it also makes your business easier to find.
While X (Twitter) is still too mainstream to have its controversies reflect poorly on its users – after all, almost everybody is using it! – refocusing your business’s social media presence to another platform, like Bluesky, would show your company has its finger on the pulse of the latest social media trends. This is the kind of forward-thinking behaviour that can attract new clients.
Still, one of the main considerations of using social media in the first place is how much time you are willing to invest in your business’s social media activity. For a B2B company, it can be especially useful for monitoring clients’ activity and engaging with their posts, which is helpful for establishing a strong B2B relationship. Social media is a long-term game, and it rewards proper planning and preparation.
As a smaller-to-medium sized business, it is worth tempering your expectations of how much social media will benefit your company at first. Larger established brands will benefit more quickly from social media, because going into it with a large following will immediately result in high engagement numbers. Smaller businesses should be realistic with how much time they can dedicate to a social media presence each week, as maintaining consistency in posting is more crucial than producing a large volume of content infrequently.
Don’t be discouraged by low engagement numbers on posts, however! Regular, relevant posts will create an active social media presence that will gradually build a follower base, and that means more eyes on your website.
A social media profile can also help your clients care about your brand and stay with it for the long-term because regular posts and updates will make your business feel familiar and trustworthy. To keep the attention of clients old and new, your social media presence doesn’t have to be – and shouldn’t be – as corporate as your website. Instead, try to humanise your brand and the team behind it. From content like posts about how a new product was created, to a behind-the-scenes look at a company update, or other storytelling techniques, your business will shine once it finds its voice. That’s how a new platform like Bluesky can help a business stand out.
Innovation is often what separates a good business from the rest. A strong social media profile will make people care about your brand; do not just repost information that your website already has available!
It remains to be seen whether Bluesky will continue to grow or has reach a plateau. One thing is clear: X’s reputation is beginning to falter, and fortune favours the bold when it comes to seizing new opportunities… this includes new social media platforms.
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