Ashton Kutcher was the first member of Twitter to reach 1 million followers back in 2009. For a guy holding such a big title in the Twitter world, you’d think he would still be singing (tweeting?) Twitter’s praises today. However, he recently spoke on Chelsea Handler’s Netflix talk show about hitting 1 million followers and how his perception of Twitter has changed over time.
I still use [Twitter] quite a bit. I don’t use it as much as I once did because I think my feed got polluted. I probably followed too many people, and then it kinda became a place where people just went to sell whatever it is they were trying to sell. Um, so I felt like some of the intimacy kind of disappeared once, like, media kinda grabbed it and tore it apart. At first it was real people on every account so you would actually have a conversation with someone, and now I feel like it’s a lot of people selling something, or media organizations trying to syndicate news. So it’s less intimate for me now.
If we’re honest, I think most of us agree with him. Sometimes digital marketing is a double-edged sword. We want to promote our businesses, but we don’t want to pollute something good.
This should cause us to pause before creating another Twitter card or Facebook ad and consider what we’re putting out there. Are we polluting, or are we helping? How can we reach out to our market more authentically and relationally?
The answers to these questions are highly subjective, which is why every business needs someone at the helm of marketing accountability. Always question whether what you put out there is helpful or disruptive to your audience. The cure for bad marketing is self-awareness. Know how you are perceived and help create an internet that is good for everyone.
