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The Great (?) Twitter Takeover

What will Twitter’s new landlord mean for your content marketing program? Not much in the short term, says Robert Rose. The long term is an unwritten story. Watch the short video or read the transcript to find out where he hopes it goes next.

Watch the episode:


Aired: April 29, 2022

Read the transcript

Hello everybody, Robert Rose here with the news. It’s what’s new and what’s important in the world of Content Marketing. It’s the news you need to lead in the practice of Content marketing and content strategy.

And for the best in best practices – you can always go to contentmarketinginstitute.com

Can you guess what the one item in the news this week might be? Hmm … I wonder.

Unless you were under a rock the last week, the big news (really the only thing dominating all our inboxes this week) was Twitter agreeing to be purchased by Elon Musk for the tidy sum of $44 billion.

The world’s richest person is buying the very small social media network. Remember: Twitter is barely in the top 15 global social networks – behind Facebook and Instagram by a factor of almost 10x, and behind TikTok, Snapchat, and even Pinterest. That’s right – Pinterest is bigger than Twitter.

Twitter has a ton of notoriety for who’s on the platform and who makes the most use of it. And one of those “whos” is the new owner: Mr. Elon Musk.

I won’t spend too much time on the news because it is, after all, covered just about anywhere. And if your social feed is like mine, everybody has a hot take.

What does Elon Musk acquiring Twitter mean for marketing?

Nobody knows. If this were a normal leveraged buyout to take a company private – which is what Mr. Musk is doing – we would most likely see big cost-cutting measures and an attempt to free up cash flow to pay back the loans needed to facilitate the purchase.

Except, in this case, Mr. Musk leveraged his assets to get this deal done. According to reports, more than two-thirds of the financing package comes from Mr. Musk’s own assets (including Tesla stock).

So, when Mr. Musk says it’s “not about the money,” he’s kinda right. Anything is possible. He just really wants this company for some reason.

But with the assumption (and I realize that it is just that) that Mr. Musk does care about the company’s future, what can marketers expect?

Our take: Not a lot. Certainly not in the short term. It’s unlikely that we’ll see extreme changes happen in the short term – other than a lot of noisy news around free speech and the exodus of some audiences from the platform in protest.

The short-term reality is that brands will continue to use Twitter to engage audiences, release announcements, field complaints from customers, and generally try to promote content.

So, what are we telling clients about Twitter? Unless your point of view and sense of ethics compel you to leave the platform (and that’s always a reason to leave any platform) – it’s business as usual. If you’re finding success on Twitter – you’ll probably continue to find that. If you’re not – well, it may be time to revisit that strategy anyway.

The only thing I know is true is that the number of potential outcomes (both good and bad) for Twitter is a lot more plentiful than they were a week ago.

I hope that the circus comes to an end – and the smart people at the company who are trying to build something great can focus on doing exactly that.

And that’s three minutes of news you need to lead in Content Marketing. I’m Robert Rose.

Remember: It’s your story. Tell it well.

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