Pros & Cons of X/Twitter for Business and Personal Use

Golden Hooded Tanager

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When it comes to X or Twitter people are clearly divided.

Some people hate X/Twitter, others love it. Both of them are right for different reasons.

Actually there are many pros and cons of X/Twitter.

Here you’ll find plenty of them plus resources to actually use it.



X vs Facebook – What’s the Difference?

On Facebook you mostly follow friends and family you already know.

  • X
  • Ex-Twitter
  • or X-Twitter

as I prefer to call it now gets used to follow mostly strangers you are interested in.

X is still so popular even after more than 15 years that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg finally started his own Twitter competitor called Threads!

Before you join Threads instead of X be warned though. Why?

You can’t delete your Thread account unless you also disable your Instagram profile.

You can also follow and read news on Facebook itself.

I joined Facebook back in 2008 but never could force myself to use it until I became seriously ill.

Then I started wasting time there. Yet Twitter got me hooked from day one. Why?

Indeed I’ve been using Twitter for personal and business purposes since 2008!

It can be a powerful link sharing, social networking and crowdsourcing tool for many.

These are just the most obvious benefits of X-Twitter or reasons to use it.

Below I offer you a wider variety of 50+ tools and resources to use X-Twitter effectively.


X-Twitter Pros and Cons Overview

Not interested in the free tools and resources?

Just want a quick overview of the X-Twitter pros and cons for personal and business use?

Here they are in no particular order:

proscons

There is a lot of traffic generation potential on X-Twitter.Traffic generation works mostly for mainstream opinions.
Billionaire Elon Musk acquired and stabilized X/Twitter.Elon Musk’s handling of X/Twitter is very controversial.

Meeting like-minded individuals globally is easy.Getting into trouble with trolls and bombarded by bots is likely.

Updates are relatively short and thus not as labor-intensive.X-Twitter can be a time-suck despite the shortness of updates.

You can get the latest local and global news quickly.You can get inundated with depressing bad news.

It’s easy to follow different types of people by way of lists.You can get overwhelmed by the sheer number of updates.

X-Twitter does not require real names but let’s you verify your account.Fake accounts are a problem despite crackdowns and verification.

X-Twitter gives your business free publicity.People rarely buy directly on or from X-Twitter.

No political ads are allowed on X-Twitter.Donald Trump and other provocateurs spread division.

X-Twitter is great for free speech and self-expression.You can get easily persecuted for your X-Twitter updates.
There are a lot of advanced features like threads e.g.Many of the more advanced features have to be paid for.


Why Did I Use Come up with a Pros and Cons of X-Twitter List?

Why did I start to use Twitter personally? How did it work for my own business?

I started using Twitter back in 2008! No joke!

Twitter wasn’t my favorite tool in the beginning.

It took me some time to get it or even to understand why I may need Twitter and what the pitfalls are.

Yet here I am 15+ years later and I still have a large following on X/Twitter.


Sometimes I still wonder why still use X! Then I return to this post!

Yes, ever since Elon Musk took over the reign on Twitter and renamed it to X the service has degenerated quite a bit.

There are many reasons for this – one simply being profitability at all costs and the firing of most employees.

Personally I now prefer Mastodon, the “federated” alternative to X.

Yet I still offer X-Twitter content writing and social media management services for clients all over the world!

That’s also why I came up with a X-Twitter pros and cons list! You have to decide for yourself!

So here are the pros, cons and X/Twitter tools to make the experience of it much more rewarding.

Indeed X-Twitter is a lot like Facebook although it’s a different concept.

Both sites do not necessarily result in significant referral traffic or other benefits you can measure easily.

Unless of course you are already a very popular “influencer” or “go viral”.

I wanted to share my thoughts on X-Twitter to help you decide whether it makes sense or not.

Additionally I collected X-Twitter related tools and resources.

They enable you to answer the original question: use it or not?

You decided you actually want to use X.com despite the potential cons?

Then you will find plenty of ideas how to use it below:


Reasons to Use X-Twitter

As you might suspect there are plenty of reasons to use X-Twitter.

It often depends on who you are and what you do for a living. Anybody in

will probably use it all the time.

Many other business users probably also will but here already there are different opinions.

Some brands consider X-Twitter to be secondary because other social networking tools are much larger both by sheer user numbers and actual engagement.

Yet Facebook and Instagram – both owned by controversial billionaire Mark Zuckerberg – are walled gardens that hide their content from Google.

YouTube is also huge but not a social network at all.

Google search for site:Twitter.com/onreact hsoing tweets from a few years.


In contrast X-Twitter updates show up in Google search results since 2015 more frequently.

Why? They reached a deal to display updates that matter back then. What does that mean?

Google will sometimes show your updates on top of search results for your name or business name.

Google does not index all X-Twitter updates!

It only does show those that have been linked to or shared by others in most cases.

Unless your account is very powerful in general.

X/Twitter is treated like any other website when it comes to indexing and ranking.

Thus linked to pages get an additional boost on Google.

I’ve compiled links providing both actual personal stories of positive X-Twitter usage.

In essence some of the pros can be viewed as cons and vice versa.

Yet let’s start with the positive or optimistic view on things.

The fact that billionaire Elon Musk has taken over and saved the financially struggling site was good news at first.

Additionally here are some articles that cover benefits that are objectively there.

Over the recent years some new useful features have been added.

With X-Twitter Communities allowing you to create user groups or smaller semi-private audiences.

Super Follows let you charge for (additional) updates.

Here are some more advantages of Twitter use and/or reasons to use it.


Reasons NOT to Use X-Twitter

X-Twitter is indeed controversial to some extent even after many years of existence.

That may be the reason why it never went mainstream like Facebook.

With outspoken and often controversial billionaire Elon Musk of Tesla and Space X taking over Twitter and renaming it to X even more drama ensued!

Here are some personal stories and also die hard facts that may discourage you from actually engaging on X-Twitter. Make sure to find out what the downsides are.

You need to know these things before you actually plunge in and take a deep dive on X/Twitter.

I don’t want you to waste your time and money in case you aren’t really convinced. Why exactly?

In short X-Twitter has lots of issues. Some of them worse than others.

None of them has been devastating yet but they add up. There is a lot of

  • fear
  • anger
  • hate

spreading on the platform. The algorithm rewards engagement no matter the cost.

This way obnoxious messages that get a ton of resistance get pushed additionally!

Also bots and automated accounts are creating a lot of

  • noise
  • spam
  • fakes

Censorship is an ongoing issue that even made billionaire Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX criticize the site before finally acquiring it.

It provoked him to buy enough Twitter shares to make him the largest shareholder and de facto owner.

A related issue over the years has been the involvement of Saudi Arabia – both legal and illegal. Why is that a problem?

SA is an absolute monarchy keen on subduing democratic opposition both online and offline.

You can even get banned immediately for a petty offense like a joke despite having more than 150k followers.

Personally I had to limit my engagement on X/Twitter in recent years because the sheer onslaught of

  • negativity
  • outrage
  • hate
  • bad news
  • propaganda

exhausted me. With Elon Musk firing most Twitter employees after taking over and renaming the platform to X many issues got even worse.

Now I get the most engagement from SPAM accounts peddling porn.

Below are some more issues and examples covered in detail on third party sites:


X-Twitter Clients

TweetDeck screenshot


X-Twitter clients are tools that allow you to access X by other means than the X.com or Twitter.com website itself.

Here are some of the most popular tools that could be used as “clients”. Some of them are broader platforms allowing you to access multiple social media sites.

I’ve used most of them myself and still use one of them – XPro (formerly TweetDeck) – regularly.

Twitter.com is a bit hard to use as you get easily overwhelmed with updates. The new X or Twitter layout is also quite controversial.

The first three clients are ideal for business use and marketing campaigns. Make sure not to over-automate though!

Hootsuite and Buffer also work with many other social media sites, not just X-Twitter.


Free X-Twitter Scanners

One of the great things about X-Twitter almost from day one was the plethora of third party tools enhancing the user experience of the service.

Many tools have disappeared over the years. X-Twitter has made it hard for tool makers to stay afloat. Yet some of them remain stable and useful.

The tools you find in this list have been around for many years and have a working business model behind them.

They allow you to scan your tweets for manifold reasons.

You can scan your content or your followers to find out more about yourself and others you interact with.

It’s highly recommended. Otherwise Twitter might be a bit overwhelming.

  • The Tweeted Times: A newspaper-like Twitter interface that collects links from your Twitter friends – Take a look at mine
  • TwitterAudit is a simple yet very useful tool that determines whether the Twitter followers of a given account are real or fake. This also helps to find out whether it is a bot or not itself.
  • Fedica is a social media management tool supporting several platforms. There is a free option and you get scheduling, analytics and crossposting features for that already which also work on X/Twitter.


X-Twitter Howto’s, Tutorials and Resources

Twitter demographics according to Sprout Social


When you finally decide to use X-Twitter for business and get serious about it you’ll notice that it is harder that it might appear at first.

It’s not just about sharing links or short updates and forgetting about them. You won’t have an audience just by tweeting, especially when you solely broadcast instead of engaging.

You need to treat X-Twitter like a blog and build an audience first.

When you use X-Twitter for business you will also realize that you can’t simply sell to your followers or that automation of updates won’t suffice.

Make sure to invest some time and effort into your Twitter account. Don’t just get frustrated after a few days or weeks. It might take a while before it works for you.

X-Twitter use for business is actually pretty hard. That’s why I also offer social media management services for X-Twitter where I

  • engage
  • curate
  • build an audience.

on behalf of clients. It’s not unlike ghost writing but I don’t hide the fact that I’m a social media professional.

I usually add my name (e.g. “Tad”) to updates so they aren’t just bot-like anonymous messages.


How Do You Use X-Twitter?

Now of course the main reason why I use X-Twitter is to inform you of my eating habits!

No, just kidding, rather to indoctrinate you with my SEO 2.0 propaganda.

It does only make sense when I have enough people to preach to.

OK, follow me now in case you are really serious about the SEO 2.0 cult!

  1. How do you use X-Twitter?
  2. Do you use a client?
  3. If yes, which one?
  4. What are you using X-Twitter for?
  5. What do you speak about actually?
  6. What are you doing?
  7. What is your user name?

In case it makes sense I’ll

  • follow you
  • @reply to you
  • retweet you!

Did I miss some valuable links? Add them in the comments!

This list will gets updated continuously for 15+ years.

Want more? Try 101 tweets on how to use Twitter.

  • Originally published: April 30th, 2008.
  • Last updated: August 4th, 2023.

Still not convinced you can use X-Twitter for business purposes but you’d like to?

Stuck with a personal account and struggling to keep it alive?

I can take care of your X-Twitter account for you! I will

  • write content for your X account
  • engage your audience and community
  • answer questions people might ask even before they find you!

I’m a professional blogger and social media manager and have been using X or Twitter successfully since 2008.

* (CC BY-ND 2.0) Golden-hooded Tanager by Andy Morffew