How should professional services firms react to the toxification of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, and what does it mean for wider social media strategies? The answer is probably right in front of us, says James Lumley.
In September the UK government confirmed that prototype Bond villain and the world’s richest man Elon Musk wasn’t invited to a government-sponsored international investment summit.
The newspapers cited disinformation on X about the summer riots as the cause, along with Musk’s assertion that civil war in the UK is “inevitable”.
“I don’t think anyone should go to the UK when they’re releasing convicted paedophiles in order to imprison people for social media posts,” Musk responded on X.
On the one hand, his comments look like just another day at the office for the world’s most prominent provocateur who also owns the world’s most provocative forum. But on the other, Musk’s now semi-official status as persona non grata by the government of a G7 country is a new low.
So, is it time for businesses in general and professional services firms in particular to quit the formerly fun and rambunctious social media platform formerly known as Twitter?
The writing on the wall
The writing has been on the wall for some time, according to Andi Buddery, head of corporate brand at professional services consultancy Barnett Waddingham. The “pivotal moment”, he says, was when Twitter transitioned into X.
“Twitter, in its original form, thrived on its dynamic nature. It was a platform where fluidity and opinion collided, bringing like-minded communities together.”
And, importantly, it provided “guiderails” to keep some sort of order. Under Musk, those guiderails have vanished, exposing users to unpredictability and risk. Risk that many businesses might want to avoid.
“The good news,” says Buddery, “is that professional services firms, unlike consumer brands, have a choice. And they are moving in one direction.”
“We’ve largely dropped Twitter from our toolkit,” says Barney O’Kelly, head of solutions and product marketing at consultancy AlixParters.
“I’ve long thought that Twitter was a bit of a waste of time for business unless you are consumer-facing in which case it is part of your customer services kit. It was always difficult to get engagement, apart from when someone jumps in with an axe to grind.”
Felicity Sandford, global brand and marketing manager at international accounting network UHY, agrees.
“We recently decided to pause all activity on X too. We have kept our profile active but are no longer posting or cross-posting from other platforms. I just don’t feel it’s where our clients hang out, and it has always been a platform that you have to give lots of love and attention to.
“It was never a lead generator, more about social listening and catching journalists for PR. But now the engagement is so low, and there isn’t sufficient time and effort for the ROI.”
Mothballs
Simon Marshall, founder of marketing consultancy TBD points out that mothballing, rather than fully quitting, X is probably the best strategy, and it appears to be what many firms are doing.
“In terms of push marketing, you need to stop that on Twitter because you don’t want your brand to hang around with wingnuts and oddballs. But it is still an effective corporate communications channel that can be used in times of desperate need.”
If something big happens and the eyes of the world are on you, he says, pushing your statement out on X will get immediate traction in a way that an emailed press release or a statement on a corporate website won’t.
A good example, he says, is the death of tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch along with some of his guests, including a Clifford Chance partner and Morgan Stanley’s chairman, on a yacht in Italy over the summer.
And don’t forget that journalists, on the whole, still love X says Michelle Hughes, head of digital marketing at Higgs LLP.
“I’ve seen much more journalist activity on X than I have on LinkedIn, and I’ve had some success responding to journalists’ requests over Twitter and generating coverage.”
So, if the exam question is ‘What should we do with an X account that has been sitting there for years?’, the answer is ‘mothball it and use it in an emergency, but keep an eye out for reporters seeking a story’.
What, then, is the alternative?
Not an X clone
Managing social media is hard work. “You can only get involved in so many channels,” says Marshall. In his opinion, pushing out the same content simultaneously on all available platforms isn’t an effective strategy.
“When you look at professional services firms who have great social media, they probably have teams of two or three people working on it full time,” he says.
That’s a resource that can “probably only look after three channels, five at most”, he says.
The sensible, and most cost-effective strategy, is to focus on one, two or three channels in which you can make the most difference. So which ones?
Probably not the direct X alternatives – Threads and BlueSky.
“I’m dabbling with Threads, as a personal account, but the jury is out,” says Sandford. “I’m having some interesting conversations with people, but there’s just not the audience there yet to merit much time on it.”
And, if X was always hard, even in its glory days, there is no reason to believe a direct X alternative will be any easier.
Facebook? Insta? TikTok?
Yes, and no. To all of them. For O’Kelly, Facebook isn’t where his customers are. The firm is an international consultancy best known for its work in business performance improvement and turnarounds. High-profile recent jobs include advising on Cineworld UK’s corporate restructuring.
But to Hughes, at Higgs, a law firm in the Midlands, Facebook is a useful channel.
“We use it for community-focused things,” she says. “It is nice to get the brand out that way, and we have quite a few followers on Facebook. More than many law firms.”
For Sandford at UHY, Facebook is essential.
“We are in 96 countries and while LinkedIn is the primary business channel in many regions, some countries in Asia use Facebook more, so it makes sense for us to have a presence there too.”
Instagram also divides people, but less so. Broadly, firms are on it to some extent.
“Instagram has a really good algorithm,” says O’Kelly. “And for us, it is mainly a recruitment play. We focus on people with interesting stories who come from a range of backgrounds.”
When looking at the feed as a whole, the reader should get a feel for the organisation through images that would be hard to express in words.
As for TikTok. There are concerns over privacy, but even so, some individuals are great at using it. And great TikToks end up repeated on Facebook and Instagram. If you can, why not? With the emphasis on ‘if you can’.
O’Kelly points to WhatsApp as one to watch.
“We are going to start kicking the tyres on WhatsApp marketing,” he says. “It heavily skews towards communities which is good for client groups,” he says.
“It could be a nice alternative to email marketing, but you’ve got to tread carefully as it could come across as intrusive. And it’s not as established in the US, which doesn’t currently use WhatsApp much.”
And, in the spirit of ‘meeting the customer where they are,’ AlixPartners has been developing content on WeChat, which is used by more than a billion people across Asia.
It’s LinkedIn, but not as you know it
“LinkedIn has always been the laggard of social media platforms. They have been slow to adopt new things and only really react when they’ve seen it work on other platforms,” says Sandford.
That’s no bad thing for risk-averse professional services professionals, especially as they probably aren’t optimising what the platform already has.
“For me, if we completely and utterly managed to master LinkedIn, at that point, I might decide that we have time to look seriously at mastering another channel,” says Hughes from Higgs LLP.
O’Kelly also considers LinkedIn to be the best platform for professional services firms.
“If you were starting a professional services firm from scratch tomorrow, you could probably do 90% of what you need to do from a marketing and BD perspective on LinkedIn.”
Simon Marshall, a self-confessed LinkedIn nut, agrees too. His simple point is that it is the one platform that everybody in business is on, which makes it, by definition, a fantastic resource.
And, as O’Kelly points out, the only reason why some people think that LinkedIn is dull is because many people post dull posts. The solution: don’t post dull.
He’s been experimenting. For the last six months he’s been working hard on his own LinkedIn profile to see if it pays dividends. It has.
How does he know? He’s not judging success through likes or shares. It’s the conversations it creates. That, he points out, is the real measure of success. Marshall agrees.
“Remember the lurkers,” he says. “Eighty per cent of people might not post but they will read.” And then they might get in touch through LinkedIn or other channels.
“LinkedIn is really very powerful if you use it properly, and by properly, I mean habitually and intentionally,” says O’Kelly.
“The problem with professional services firms is that they use LinkedIn because they think they should,” he says. “In reality, your formal company page can be largely useless. Your real company page is your employees’ past, present and future.”
This goes to the heart of one of the big issues in professional services marketing: the individual vs the organisation. And social media success is all about the individual.
“Richard Branson has over 18 million more followers than Virgin,” says Hughes. “That’s because people are much more interested in the person than the brand.”
“If you have a well-curated LinkedIn page, it is reflective of who you are, what you do, and how you help people,” says O’Kelly. That can mean that, when you meet people in person, barriers have already been broken down.
Here is the challenging part for some: “You have to turn up as a human,” he says.
What does this mean? It means post appropriately about you. Your life and your interactions as well as posting about business and work.
“Do an experiment,” says O’Kelly. “For a month, as well as posting about business, post about things that make you, you, and add photos. A pic of you running or cycling. Or anything. And you’ll see your interactions grow.”
In the last year, O’Kelly has posted, among other things, about his love of cooking, what he’s learned from the series The Bear and his son’s work experience placement. The posts, he says, should not be slickly overproduced. Authenticity is best not faked.
That has led to conversations. Not necessarily about work. But that will come.
“People also realise that it is OK to add someone to your network that you haven’t met in person,” he adds.
Hughes, at Higgs & Co, posts stories and pictures of her dog. “When she dies, I don’t know what I’ll post about,” she says with a touch of humour in her voice.
She also points out that this sort of posting doesn’t just drive external engagement, it’s great for internal engagement too.
“There is somebody in the office who writes really great posts, and I really feel I know him much better,” she says.
O’Kelly has one final anecdote. He was working with a colleague to improve their profile.
“He said, ‘I don’t want you to make me look like J [a colleague]. Every time
I go on LinkedIn, I see his face.’
“I said to him: ‘Say that again and think about it.’” ■
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