The X algorithm, formerly known as Twitter, has undergone significant changes since Elon Musk’s acquisition. As creators and small business owners, understanding how X’s recommendation engine operates is crucial for success. In this guide, we’ll explore the current algorithm and timeless principles to help you build an engaged audience.
Candidate Sourcing: X selects 1,500 tweets based on in-network (people you follow) and out-of-network (potentially interesting) sources.
Ranking Tweets: X’s machine learning model ranks these tweets, prioritizing engagement likelihood.
Filtering Tweets: Visibility filtering removes blocked/muted users, balances in-network and out-of-network content, and promotes author diversity.
Mixing Content: Sponsored and organic tweets coexist.
How X Chooses Tweets from People You Follow
Recent tweets take precedence. X considers regency when selecting top tweets for your home timeline.
Determining Relevant Posts from Unfollowed Accounts
X uses two approaches:
Social Graph: Analyzing your activity and that of similar-interest users helps X predict relevant content. If you engage with a tweet, X assumes you’d find it interesting.
Machine Learning: X’s model predicts your likelihood of engaging (likes, replies, retweets, shares). Conversations carry more weight than likes.
Ranking the 1,500 Tweets
X’s machine learning model determines the order. Replies to original tweets rank highest, followed by conversational tweets. Liking a tweet has the least impact.
Remember, X’s algorithm evolves, so stay informed and adapt your strategy accordingly!
Twitter for Business – Essential Guide
Whether you’ve chosen to re-baptise it as ‘X’ or are loyal to Twitter’s original blue bird, establishing your presence on the platform is still important for your business.
The platform represents a potential digital marketing goldmine as it has 19.05 million users and robust online communities. According to X (Twitter), the platform is great for a smooth sales funnel, boasting 62% ad recall and a 13% boost in brand awareness. It’s not a question of if your business should be on Twitter, but how.
Setting up a Twitter business account is fairly straightforward, but if you want to stand out, you’ll need to follow these steps to get it right. A detailed Twitter business plan will help enhance business growth, attract more customers, and establish your business as an authoritative voice in your industry.
In this guide, we’ll highlight the benefits of Twitter for business, its challenges, how to use it effectively, advertising, and more. By the end, you should feel ready to build your brand on Twitter.
What are the benefits of using Twitter for business?
As one of the most recognisable social media platforms, Twitter boasts plenty of benefits for businesses. Here are the main ones to consider:
✔️ Increase brand awareness: Twitter offers businesses an opportunity to reach large swathes of customers in just one post. Using 280 characters, you can quickly share information and authoritative content, or start a conversation with your target audience. In turn, your audience can then share it with their followers and quickly expand your organic reach.
✔️ Improve customer service: Twitter can act as a vital customer care and market research channel. Companies like Netflix have even set up a dedicated Twitter account that provides support, which gives its customers an accessible touch point with the company. This can create a sense of trust among your target audience and show you’re transparent and dedicated to ensuring customer satisfaction.
✔️ Increase traffic to your website: as you bolster your brand identity on Twitter,, it’s likely that your customers will want to learn more on your website. Twitter lets you embed links into your Tweets as well as in your business’s bio, which makes it easy to land on your homepage. This presents an edge over Instagram, which only lets you embed post in your bio and not posts. The best part? More website traffic usually leads to more sales.
✔️ Enhance lead generation: Twitter’s algorithms make it easier for your target audience to find your content. Therefore, it’s more likely that as they’re scrolling through their Home timeline, they’ll find your company. In turn, you’re given higher quality leads who are more prepared to engage with your brand and make a purchase.
✔️ More sales: higher quality leads can lead to more sales. Therefore, the more you establish your presence on Twitter and fall into the good graces of its algorithm, the more likely it is you’ll see an uptick in your sales.
What are the challenges of using Twitter for business?
While there are some strong pros, Twitter does come with its challenges. As the host of one of the largest online communities, the amount of content and competition can be overwhelming. Here are some factors to consider before you dive into Twitter for business.
❌ Getting noticed takes some work: about 500 million tweets are posted each day, which can make it difficult to stand out. Cutting through the noise to reach your target audience means you need to do your research. Ensure you post the right content and make use of the hashtags and visuals that reflect the preferences of your customers.
❌ It can be time-consuming to manage: between competitor research, tracking trends, and refining your strategy based on your data, Twitter takes time – especially if you’re looking to bolster your organic reach.
❌ It can be difficult to measure the results: Twitter is equipped with a campaign dashboard that lets you see how well your ads are performing. It tracks impressions, results, engagement rate, and cost per result. However, this can be quite a steep learning curve for those starting out – but it won’t be a challenge for marketing veterans.
How to use Twitter for business effectively
Using Twitter correctly doesn’t mean just dropping a bunch of random Tweets on your profile whenever you get the chance. With the right strategy and content pipeline, you should be able to become a recognised brand on Twitter. Here’s how:
Set clear goals: you need to establish your measures of success to understand if your approach to Twitter for business was correct. What is it that you want to achieve from Twitter for business? This could include increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or driving sales. Once you’ve established this, use the Twitter campaign dashboard to track your performance and amend your plan accordingly.
Choose the right content: your content should be relevant to your target audience and should be interesting and engaging. Do market research to understand what your target audience might want from you and what sort of trends and content catch their attention. This will help you get higher returns on your ad campaigns.
Use hashtags: hashtags are a great way to get your content seen by more people as they’ll help place your posts in the right corners of the social media platform. However, keep in mind there is a balance – you don’t want to be flooding your viewers with hashtags in every other word of your Tweet. Aim for a maximum of three hashtags per post.
Engage with your audience: Twitter was designed to foster the growth of online communities, which suggests a two-way conversation between businesses and customers. Remember, customers want to interact with brands they believe care about their wants and needs, so replying to feedback and comments is always useful – particularly the negative reviews. Moreover, Twitter is also great for starting public conversations, which could position you in the right spot to get lots of press or, at least, new followers.
Run Twitter ads: Twitter ads can help you reach a wider audience and promote your products or services. The good thing is that you have a range of options for your Twitter ads: follower ads, promoted ads, Twitter Amplify, Twitter Takeover, branded hashtags, and more. It’s a good investment because statistics show that the average ROI for Twitter ad campaigns are 40% higher than the average ROI across all other media investments.
Advertising on Twitter
Twitter has a wealth of opportunities for advertising. Twitter Ads allow you to target your ads for specific demographics, interests, and behaviours. Knowing what each one is will help you strategise.
🔵 Twitter Follower Ads: known as Promoted Accounts, this type of Twitter ad allows you to promote your brand’s entire Twitter account. It targets users who don’t already follow your brand and can help grow your business’s following. These ads will also show in the Who to Follow suggestions and in search results, giving you great reach.
🔵 Promoted Tweets: these are posts that appear at the top of the search results and in the “Who to follow” section. Otherwise known as Twitter Promoted Ads, these look a lot like regular Tweets. The difference is that you (the advertiser) are paying to display the content to people who are not already following you on Twitter. The great part is that these ads can be liked, retweeted, and commented on, which offers great reach for your company. They can look like text ads, image ads, video ads, moments ads, carousel ads, or Twitter Live ads
🔵 Twitter Amplify: Twitter Amplify pairs your brand with premium publishers, making it easier to put you in front of the eyes of a wider audience. It enables your brand to align with culturally relevant videos that your target audience is already watching, so your video ad will play as pre-roll at the start of premium videos across the categories you select. This helps expand your organic reach.
