BITE Guest Trend | Twitter, Threads…Mastodon? The future of social media marketing

As Twitter’s issues mount and the exodus from the micro-blogging platform continues, so has the rise of different social networks. Since its leak – and subsequent launch – originally of the month, Meta’s Threads has been hailed as the subsequent huge factor in text-based social sharing.

However, many are actually additionally turning to Mastodon, the open-source, non-profit ‘antidote’ to billionaire nepotism.

But what’s Mastodon? Does it work in the identical approach as Twitter and Threads? And may it’s the subsequent step to success in your social media marketing technique?

Mastodon is a social community which was based in 2016 as a extra moral, user-friendly different to Twitter. Although it has now been round for some time, it skilled an actual upsurge in exercise following Musk’s takeover of Twitter in late 2022, and the next fallout.

Unlike the bulk of social media platforms that we use day by day – reminiscent of Twitter, Instagram, and now Threads – Mastodon is decentralised. This signifies that, somewhat than a single platform controlling and moderating all of Mastodon’s content material, it’s operated by hundreds of smaller, unbiased servers, or ‘cases’, which might talk with one another. So, though your account hyperlinks to 1 server, you possibly can nonetheless interact with customers throughout totally different servers.

Within every server, customers are free to publish content material, interact in conversations, comply with different customers, and construct their very own following. In this respect, Mastodon operates just about like some other social media community. However, every server operates as its personal autonomous neighborhood which has its personal ‘tradition’ and abides by its personal set of guidelines.

Many of the servers are constructed round totally different matters and areas of curiosity – so when new customers signal as much as Mastodon, they’ll select to hitch a particular server ‘neighborhood’, which might make it simpler to attach and interact with individuals with comparable pursuits.

How does Mastodon evaluate to Twitter and Threads?

Following Musk’s takeover of Twitter, and earlier than Threads was introduced, many hailed Mastodon as the perfect ‘different’ to Twitter. However, while the person expertise and sure options are pretty just like Twitter, there are additionally some clear variations.

Firstly, and maybe most significantly from a marketing perspective – none of Mastodon’s web site visitors comes from paid promoting or boosted content material. You can’t publish sponsored adverts or promote posts on Mastodon (so no viewers concentrating on), its feed’s algorithm is chronological, and any marketing which takes place on the web site must be natural. This is as a result of Mastodon was created as an anti-capitalist ‘antidote’ to the large tech social platforms, the place customers can escape push profiles, and the place their information is just not leveraged for promoting functions. Instead, the main target is on permitting customers to curate their very own feeds to provide the precise kind of content material they need to see and interact with.

This signifies that, in the case of constructing a presence on Mastodon as a model, the main target must be on high quality content material and a watertight, long-term technique. People should not on Mastodon to be ‘bought’ to – maybe extra so than some other social community, Mastodon customers worth constructing human connections. So any marketing efforts must be refined, with a concentrate on authenticity, insightful conversations and significant interactions, somewhat than amassing a big following shortly to drive gross sales. Anything too sales-centric, and also you threat getting blocked or banned.

https://www.creativebrief.com/chunk/pattern/guest-trend/twitter-threads-mastodon-the-future-of-social-media-marketing