Does every company really need social media accounts?
Whenever a new social media platform emerges and catches on with the public, certain people – called squatters – flock to various handles in a mad grab for @coke, @apple, @nike, and so on.
The idea is that brands ascribe such importance to their social media presence, that they’ll offer thousands for the handle, providing a quick buck for those with fast fingers and early access.
Brands usually do follow the crowd and assign social media managers to populate the new channels that make the cut, often buying their names from these username squatters. (A prominent exception is the owner of @GQ, who kept their Twitter handle, unmotivated by Condé Nast’s offerings, because it’s his nickname).
But recently, some brands have begun to question the value of social media as a place to promote their brand, chasing earned engagement and paying for promotion. What if it’s not worth the drama, expense, and possible unforced errors? What if instead of saying something, you said nothing?
‘Social media doesn’t align’
On Jan. 8, just after the U.S. Capitol was stormed, candle company Keap decided to shut down its social media pages. In an email, the B-corp’s co-founders wrote that keeping a presence didn’t work for the company.
Stephen Tracy, who founded the company with Harry Doull after they worked at Google, wrote to customers that it was trying to foster connections in “our own lives,” and considered roadblocks to this progress.
“The answers are plentiful,” he wrote, “but one common thread often emerges: addictive technology that keeps us distracted and restless.”
Working at Google, Tracy added, provided an inside perspective on the motivations of the tech industry, namely engagement and the endless scroll. These habits were antithetical to the candle company’s mission.
“Armed with an insider's knowledge of how these addictive technologies affect our lives, Harry and I have often felt that being on social media doesn’t align with what Keap is about as a company,” Tracy wrote to customers, advising them that the company’s newsletter would be their main source of communication henceforth.
“Though we had to overcome some initial uncertainty, we feel far more excitement about reclaiming our time from social media,” Tracy wrote.
Though it’s not common, this thinking isn’t unique to Keap Trader Joe’s, for example, does not have a Twitter account. British cosmetics brand Lush also shut down its Twitter account because of its perceived toxicity of social media.
We're switching up social.
Increasingly, social media is making it harder and harder for us to talk to each other directly. We are tired of fighting with algorithms, and we do not want to pay to appear in your newsfeed. pic.twitter.com/nJUzG0lham— LUSH UK (@LushLtd) April 8, 2019
It also extends beyond social media into the real world. Companies like REI have made the choice to opt out of the traditional Black Friday frenzy, closing its stores and giving employees the day off. Instead REI encourages Americans to #optoutside. If someone wants their stuff they know where to find them. Black Friday and social media are both defaults for many businesses, representing a standard, whose benefit is often unquestioned.
Is it worth it?
In a story in Harvard Business Review from 2017, researchers set out to study the effectiveness of social media in a marketing sense. At the time, 80% of Fortune 500 companies decided to have a Facebook presence, they wrote, with many marketers viewing the number of followers and likes as valuable since someone who follows a brand might be more inclined to make a purchase. They also examined paid promotion, when a company pays the platform to put its post in front of a group of users.
“The results were clear: Social media doesn’t work the way many marketers think it does,” the authors wrote. “The mere act of endorsing a brand does not affect a customer’s behavior or lead to increased purchasing, nor does it spur purchasing by friends.”
In other words, customers follow brands – brands don’t create new customers by adding follows.
The main takeaway from that study was that branded content can work well, but that companies ought to think critically about what they’re doing — just like the candle company.
Lauren Mathis, who co-founded a network of B-corps (companies with a private certification regarding social and environmental responsibility) in New York, told Yahoo Finance that social media has come up frequently in discussions with members, who are trying to be critical about their decisions and their broader impacts.
Mathis said that social media took over so quickly as a default way of operating and people don’t realize the other ways to do businesses until they consider leaving. “There’s this illusion we need it and it’s the only place to do business. I think we just need to break apart that illusion,” she said.
‘RIP Carrie Fisher, you’ll always have the best buns in the galaxy’
It’s not hard to find a list of extremely cringeworthy unforced errors made by companies when it comes to social media. When a brand goes business casual on the internet, it can often result in something “fun,” making mild jokes and ribbing competitors, like when Wendy’s makes fun of other fast-food chains. That might be nice for the brand — somehow, in a goodwill sort of way — but it could easily result in something like Cinnebon’s infamous tweet commemorating the late Carrie Fisher, tweeting “RIP Carrie Fisher, you’ll always have the best buns in the galaxy,” which led, of course, to an apology.
Thus, brands need to evaluate the value-add of their social media presence. What is the upside for the brand? What does this goodwill exactly mean? I, personally, am a big fan of Spark Notes’ Twitter account, but have never used their services and would not (they provide summaries of books to high schoolers who don’t do the reading as well as other study guides). Whatever goodwill the company cultivates will do nothing for its bottom line. The TikTok generation barely even uses Twitter, but the company’s social media managers keep putting delightful videos into my stream. At least for now, this value, whatever it is, outweighs accidentally putting their foot in it, in the company’s view.
This nebulous upside is the case across the board at many companies. More than 326,000 people follow @ExxonMobil on Twitter. Why? Even Salesforce, a B2B company has 537,000 accounts following it. Both have extremely minimal engagement. Are people reading these tweets? Is this necessary? Prominent anti-Twitter thinker Alex Balk, co-founder of the Awl, once gently reminded readers that if important news breaks on Twitter, you’ll find out very soon anyway.
Tesla and Berkshire Hathaway
A famous example of an expensive Twitter mistake was Elon Musk’s “funding secured” tweet in 2018, where he used the weed number (420) and then paid the SEC a fine of $20 million for it.
Musk said it was “worth it” and it’s hard not to believe that it was. The Tesla CEO has since become the world’s richest man, and part of that is due to his social media presence, his pulpit from which he tells it on the mountain to his acolytes — who either buy his cars or buy Tesla stock. Social media is a huge part of that company and its mystique.
But what if he didn’t tweet?
Take Warren Buffett, the “Oracle of Omaha,” whose every word creates headlines just as Musk’s do — even after many decades. When a fake Twitter account emerged in 2018 (almost) bearing his name (“Buffet”), social media went wild with excitement. Kanye West followed the account at the time.
“I just think there’s other things in life I want to do than tweet. I am not that desperate for somebody to hear my opinion,” the real Warren Buffett said at the time, in the aftermath. “I put out an annual report. I do not have a daily view on all kinds of things.”
The few tweets Buffett’s public Twitter has done were executed by a “friend of his,” a spokesperson for Berkshire said at the time.
Not only is this a flex — he’s not thirsty, people — Buffett sees the value in occasional missives rather than a play-by-play, giving him time to refine opinions and really decide what’s worth sharing. And, it makes any communiqué an event.
This same discipline can be applied to the company writ large. Berkshire, which is not consumer facing for the most part, has a website that I could design (the only thing I can do in html is make links and format text) and no social media. (If a squatter has the keys to the @berkshire account on Twitter, they don’t appear to have convinced the company to buy them.)
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Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on consumer issues, personal finance, retail, airlines, and more. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.
