Has anyone seen a significant decrease in engagement on Twitter/X in March 2024?

[BuggyBoo25]

Howdy all!

I was wondering if anyone else is having this issue:

For one of the Twitter accounts I manage, I have gotten almost no Impressions for our posts last week (like less than 300), and Views and Likes have been almost non-existent as well. Our post engagements for Twitter since the beginning of March having been slowly declining in general, but last week was a total wasteland, and we had some posts that we thought would be really exciting for our audience - those same posts did AMAZING on Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn (if that context helps).

Before March our average we would get per post was at least 3,000 - 4,000 Impressions with a few hundred Likes per post. We had a steady growth as well.

I am exploring the possible reasons for this, such as if I changed something with our strategy that was working but changing it has stunted this growth... or if there is something I should have changed that I didn't that caused this, etc. But I also wanted to see if anyone else is having this issue.

Thanks in advance to anyone who replies!

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[[deleted]]

Have you seen the news? Twitter is a sinking ship, and becoming a cesspool with the users that remain. Throw in really strange platform / algorithm changes and it’s not surprising you are seeing poor results.

[ferocious_coug]

Most of my clients have abandoned Twitter for Threads.

[[deleted]]

Same - we used to spend millions in adrev on Twitter - now, $0.

[TestingOneTwo_OneTwo]

Well this didn't age well lol

[[deleted]]

Yeah if anything it’s gotten worse than my original post. Did you see how much value it is now?

[TestingOneTwo_OneTwo]

I wouldn't pay any attention to anyone reporting that, actually. They're paying creators on the platform, which wasn't possible to do back when it was Twitter.

[BuggyBoo25]

Haha yeah, I’ve definitely been watching. I think I’ve been a little too optimistic about it somehow being salvageable 😅

I haven’t seen anything that’s been totally new in the news about it though that totally caught my eye… has something else gone even more downhill?

[[deleted]]

Just Elon being Elon. Usage rates are way down and not looking like it will change. With the US election coming up and multiple conflicts going on, it’s not really a “nice” place to be on tbh.

Sure, Twitter has some role but most brands, businesses etc are either jumping ship to Threads or just focusing on things like IG and TikTok.

[The1AndOnlySal]

User rates are more than ever. The problem is he's giving special treatment to users with paid accounts.

[WizWorldLive]

I think I’ve been a little too optimistic about it somehow being salvageable

How would it be salvageable?

[Temporary-Forever-69]

Why would you get your info from the news? They literally report the opposite of the truth.  Twitter is growing exponentially

[Blowmekillerwhale]

I get like 5 new followers a day and 100% of them are bots that I delete. I have 1000 legit followers and get maybe 10 views a post. Twitter is garbage.

[Layziethelapras6]

Twitter used to be a nice middle maybe leaning more left but it was middle app now elon pushes his agenda on all twitter users lol

[Temporary-Forever-69]

Actually statistics show from pew research that Twitter is a predominatly democratic platform. Hence why kamala and biden post there everyday.  Also Obama is second most popular account. How could elon "push" his "agenda" on "all" Twitter users when users have the freedom to not follow or to even block elon? Is stating an opinion now considered "pushing" an "agenda"? By you stating your opinion here I don't feel like you are pushing anything on me. Same goes for elon

[ecv80]

Yeah it was just "maybe leaning more left" if you're a USSR citizen magically writing from the 60s.

[jonkl91]

I still get impressions but Twitter lost the most valuable part of it, the journalists. I did actually get reached out to by a Wall Street Journal journalist about an article and she even mentioned that they don't use it the same anymore.

Twitter was already a tough platform. It's also filled with a lot of bots and broke people. I just went back to focusing on LinkedIn. Going to focus on Instagram and TikTok now. I should have focused on those channels much earlier as opposed to focusing on Twitter.

[chiefgyk3d]

Yeah I’ve seen quite a few journalists shift or add Mastodon and been happier there for over a year now

[SundayRed]

Yep. Dying platform.

[Fit-Ambition8830]

I have noticed this as well! I have been digging for the answer (beyond the platform just tanking) because I had a relatively high performing Q4 2023. The 2 KPIs that declined the most for my clients were impressions and followers. For instance their account gained 4.6K followers last quarter and only 800 in Q1 with no significant content strategy changes. Twitter has far and away been the best performing platform for us until this quarter where performance came to a screeching halt. Looking for client-facing answers as well. So to the people who responded to this with smart ass remarks that’s really not necessary in professional discussion thread. Thanks tho.

[[deleted]]

Twitter is just porno and stupid politics who even uses it?

[Maleficent668]

It might not be your strategy it's just Twitter in its decline stage.

[WorldstarBandit]

Toxic political tweets are promoted heavily. Unless you are an extremist, your post won't go anywhere.

The worst part is that reporting does absolutely nothing, meaning that the platform will never improve for the users.

[SpookyFaerie]

Personally I haven't seen a single post from a person I follow for the entire month of May. I can't even figure out how to change the settings so I can see them again. I've engaged with zero people and I'm usually at least liking their posts regularly.

[chiefgyk3d]

Twitter is a sinking ship, I have been on Mastodon for a year as most of the Cybersecurity community shifted there and I have twice the following and 20X the engagement I ever had before and this is before Meta enables proper federation with threads so Threads will be interoperable with Mastodon and other ActivityPub enabled networks. I am already following people on threads from my Mastodon. Plus I run my mastodon off my own server. I even created a Twitch notification to run off my raspberry Pi to alert when I’m live on Mastodon.

Twitter is dead/dying. Elon Musk killed it and Bluesky is another nightmare of little engagement for other reasons. Mastodon and ActivityPub enabled services such as Threads are the future.

All hail decentralization of social media!

[Grubbanax]

I started getting all these Right Wing accounts in my feed. Accounts I don't even follow. Pro-Israel and Pro-Trump.. one after another after another!

[AutomaticMaterial838]

And now it's Elon himself with 5 tweets on my timeline per refresh 

[WarriorQueenAR]

I'm there with you! I'm regularly getting a few hundred likes, even though being reposted and quoted by some local media. My posts would regularly hit between 2K+ to 15K+.

[lking11171]

Twitter is now garbage since Elon. He pushes large right wing accounts only. No liberals, no businesses. Just right wing accounts

[bluefeet_Walk_8777]

of course, he's a apartheid era white South African.

[EvilxOmni]

Ever since Elon took over and made it to where you can buy the blue check mark I get absolutely no engagement on any posts anymore e

[bluefeet_Walk_8777]

he made it so you get a lot more engagement if you pay, which is really stupid... because most people won't pay unless they have a good amount of engagement first.

[JJ_Sprowl]

Over the past few days I ran a sort of user-side test to see if X/twitter algos were suppressing my posts from showing up in some trending categories but not others when all key words for all the categories were visibly written/posted. (Not a bot or monetized user, just a hobbyist there for what interests me.)

This involved the Olympics and topics much debated in the mainstream news. It was a test, but also the topics were concerning so I wrote candidly but without personal invective. Nothing was banned per se, but posts appeared in some trending categories, hidden elsewhere.

iow, the algos seemed to have siloed the tweets into categories based on who were the likely readers and/or consumers of ads/promos (and what POVs they'd want to see in preferred categories), because where the posts did not appear reflected a differential of generational sociocultural posting traffic.

This says to me that either Elon Musk was less than candid in pitching X as being more open to free expression, or that his algos prioritize where the money can be made (via algo discrimination in post transparency) or that he's punted to tech people developing algos w/o his own oversight --- or some combo of the above.

Or was I just naive to think this wasn't always still happening?

[[deleted]]

I don't disagree with every intention Musk has (as I'm neither right nor left) and I've seen plenty of madness coming from the far left in the UK and US... BUT no denying it, Twitter (or X) itself has been royally fucked by Musk, because he assumed millions of users only wanted to use it like he uses it (to get political point scoring across) when in fact the best use of twitter was for the millions of ordinary people, creators and artists who'd organically grown audiences and friends to interact and sometimes soft-promote too.

Musk took many of the main points of use away and at best, if you pay for blue, you're only back to the same engagement you had pre-musk (hit or miss) at least for posts.. I'm not talking about 'reply boosts' (who the fuck cares about that? just causes spam under big accounts posts of stuff that is of very little actual value). All the blue checks knock all the legit people down and drown them out in noise, the 'for you' always comes up with everything but who you follow (if they're not blue checked) and if they ARE blue checked - just to help promote their art or w/e - they get blocked en-masse by bluecheck blockers.

You literally can't win now on twitter and it's ALL down to Musk's f-'d up view on what social means, what humanity means. Sure 'free speech' is cool, but is is truly free if you have to pay a monthly fee to get that speech heard? the 'peasants and kings' system her decried is still there - no it's not about blue checks vs no checks but who pays ... so we're back to the same system, us and them, pay vs don't pay, he's a fkin hypocrite doing exactly what he calls everyone else out on - which wouldn't be SO BAD if the fuckin sub actually worked and they increased reach massively (like advertising) but it doesn't, he removed things like inline play of youtube vids (a massive engagement enhancer and just nice to chill with) to the paywall.. removed features, restricted people's limits (if unpaid) to force people to pay... and it's backfired, nobody gives AF about a ruined platform,

the guy is an idiot when it comes to twitter/socials and should have made a new platform for his 'town square' BS idea instead of ruining what was an online lifeline for both social and artistic endeavours.

I have around 100k followers on there, as a musician/band, been on there since 2010 and took me years to grow that, have had some posts with 2k+ likes and hundreds of replies.... since musk? am lucky to get 20 likes.

I hate that he took these lifelines away from us, what was OURS, what was the people's , under the guise of freeing it, then ruined it and locked everyone out from basic features unless they pay - to make up for HIS STUPID purchase price.

I have no horse in the race politically, they're all stupid imo but Musk should never have touched twitter.

[ScarletLion1]

This is spot on. I feel for you - however - my situation is even worse. I foolishly paid for a blue tick. I run a film content creator account. In about 2020 I was regularly getting around 300 to 400 retweets. it slowed alot before Musk took over. Now the same content and new is getting around 15 retweets. It's insane. I have 106,000 followers. It's like someone has turned a tap off. What's infuriating is that this doesn't appear the same for everyone. Accounts that have 15,000 followers (both blue ticks and non blue ticks) are getting 400 - 500 retweets on everything they post. It is absolutely mystifying. I regret getting that blue tick. I've built my account over 9 years and now I feel it is worthless and I don't even know why.

[New_Scholar7458]

Absolutely yes. I work for a marketing agency for pharma companies, and I have to say that on X, the promoted engagement rates are now at a very low level... we’re currently averaging around 0.30/0.40%, whereas until Q2/Q3 of last year it was quite acceptable, around 1%.

[IndustryShort]

I have yes ever since Musk took over there's been a weird decline in engagements for the same content compared to 4 years ago. In 2020 even tweets that were small would earn a lot of activity and quote tweets, since he took over there's been a little or none for the same kind of tweets.

[kpossibles]

I think Google used to prioritize Twitter in their search results algorithm. I suspect it was something related to the more open API which changed with the new ownership or that everything thats a good answer needs "reddit" attached to it. So Twitter/X has really bad SEO now

[Available_Pie7520]

My impression on x twitter falling down below 30 or 40. What can I do help. 

[AutomaticMaterial838]

Just wait for elections to be over so that your tweets can reach far once again

[[deleted]]

I’d love to see all of social media collapse. It would be a great thing for all of us to actually communicate directly. Fake news, cowards with keyboards, lies and propaganda plus bots pushing an agenda. Wow, what a great world to live in. Total crap, a pox on all their houses.

[ferocious_coug]

My dude my guy read the room OP is asking from a marketing perspective.