Why Twitter Is A Stupid Place To Spend Your Marketing Dollars

Everyone on Twitter isn’t stupid, but it certainly seems like all stupid people have something to say on Twitter. Nonetheless, according to one article from marketing pub The Drum, Twitter is in the midst of a comeback as one of the most popular social channels. The problem is, the points made in the article are pretty shallow. Here’s one of the flawed arguments: “Twitter has become a place to find breaking news before news stations publish anything.”

Twitter very rarely “breaks” news, unless you consider celebrity gossip or juvenile politicians and billionaires insulting one another to be news.

Instead, the vast majority of breaking news on Twitter is actually Twitter users linking to and sharing links to news stories with varying levels of credibility. The article is a one-sided piece of content marketing written to encourage brands to increase their ad spending on Twitter. Unfortunately, it does so at the expense of real journalists who could actually use more brand support, such as struggling local news stations. For brands, a better priority would be to find a way to support the storytellers who are really creating news instead of the people lazily pushing a button to share it.