Twitter Dilemmas For The Writing World
For writers who are working on building their social media presence, Twitter seems to be on a downward spiral
It’s no secret that the key to building a solid following as a writer is through social media.
Many of the social media platforms that writers are frequenting right now are:
Twitter
Instagram
Facebook
TikTok
Medium
Quora
Linked In
These social media outlets allow writers to connect with other writers and readers. While writers are building this following on social media, they can advertise their works and talk about them as they create. This in turn builds momentum and helps their sales.
But, yet again, the game has changed in the world of social media.
Elon Musk bought out Twitter and ultimately began the change of one of the most used social media platforms for authors and perhaps one of the best-performing platforms for users.
Immediately after Elon Musk purchased it, the writing world on Twitter became divided. Some were excited hoping it would help less popular authors be seen, while others began leaving the platform. Even bigger accounts such as movie and television stars, as well as musicians began leaving the platform.
As a result of this turbulence, the foundation of the platform (the developers), have been disappearing due to Elon Musks' changes.
Users have reported features not working, slow traffic on the site, and new changes coming that make Twitter not as enjoyable to use. These aspects that users are encountering on Twitter are causing more and more users to leave the platform and search for other options. However, the bad news is, there aren’t as many viable options out there working as well as Twitter does.
For bigger accounts like mine, I was disappointed with the turbulence Twitter has been facing as it is my best-performing platform. (Kayla Hicks- Twitter)
Naturally, since I have so many followers, I want to stay and see what happens with the platform.
However, a smart move for me would be to search for other comparable/ viable platforms to Twitter and try to move some of my followers there. Or get them to follow me on my other social media platforms. Which, let’s face it, is a hard thing to achieve.
Mostly because they need to do extra work to find and follow me on these other platforms.
So, now the question is, what other social media platforms could replace Twitter if they tried?
https://joinmastodon.org/ — Mastodon seems to be the first choice, but you need to find the server that best serves your platform and audience and apply for it.
https://counter.social/index.html — Counter social is similar to Twitter in terms of allowing users to post up to 500 character limit posts. They also encourage creatives to use it to share their media there and find their community.
https://substack.com/ — Substack isn’t new and people have been using it for some time. It's more used for creating subscriptions and having people subscribe to your stuff, which in turn allows you to start earning money.
https://discord.com/download — Discord has become popular for many users as it allows you to form groups, share media, and create discussions. (Fun fact: it originally started out as a chat platform for gamers.)
My hope is that Twitter evens out and we won’t have to worry about leaving the platform.
I have found great people there and in turn, learned so much. Most of the things I learned there furthered my career.
Maybe if Twitter survives, we will all have simply found other great platforms to add to the social media portions of our author platforms.