X: The Ultimate Guide for Small Businesses — Frequency, Style, & Content

Social media is among the most prevalent features of modern-day life. According to a 2024 study, the average human spends 2 hours 23 minutes on social media daily. Modern trends of increased social media usage have reshaped the digital marketing opportunities available to small business owners; it is more important than ever for entrepreneurs to have a content strategy for social media to strengthen their brand’s identity, relate to audiences, and advertise their services and products.

Developing a content strategy can feel overwhelming. There is a plethora of varying social media platforms, and all have content styles that resonate with their distinctive audience. In this article, we’ll explore how small business owners can use X, formerly known as Twitter, to meet marketing objectives and build audience trust.

Small Business Owners Should Know Their Objectives for Posting on X

Like any aspect of business, you need sufficient planning, an understanding of the cultural and economic environment, and clearly defined goals and objectives to succeed with X. Before small business owners start tweeting relentlessly to promote their brands, however, they must establish and understand the intended outcome of their X posts.

Is your goal to strengthen your brand’s identity through an aesthetic mood board (yes, X can be used visually, more on that later) to inform, persuade, and interest potential clients? Or to create a more personalized experience for your existing user base? All objectives, whether searching for a direct sale or fulfilment of broader brand goals, require their own established content strategies.

What Content Style Performs the Best on X?

X, despite recent criticisms regarding Elon Musk’s direction for the platform, remains one of the world’s most-used social media platforms, with over 500M monthly users. Of these 500M active users, over 40% are under 40.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that those under 40, many of whom grew up alongside social media, interact with digital media platforms in a most sophisticated, yet simultaneously inattentive way.

This means that to capture the attention of many X users, digitally successful small business owners must go above and beyond, considering creative methods to convey their brand messages to audiences.

While X, unlike Instagram and TikTok, is predominantly a text-based app, users are increasingly requiring visual aids to remain engaged and receptive to social media messages. Tweets that include a visual element receive 150% more social media engagements. So, large blocks of poorly written text are unlikely to resonate with existing and potential members of your target audience.

The way small business owners can stimulate, intrigue, or persuade audiences to take interest in their brand on X, is by centering their posts on something visual. Before prolific social media managers consider the textual element of their tweets, they unearth a visual image, such as a thought-provoking photo, meme-worthy video, or an informative piece of graphic design that will interest their specific audience.

The text is there to add context and understanding to their chosen visual medium. They concentrate on deploying concise sentence lengths and leaving space in between their key points to improve readability for users.

Tip: Tools like Canva or Adobe Spark can help you easily create visually appealing content tailored to your audience. For example, showcase customer testimonials or behind-the-scenes looks at your business to build trust and engagement.

How Frequently Should Small Business Owners Post on X?

On websites such as Instagram, users are likely to see all of a brand’s recently uploaded content in one transaction. For example, when a brand or small business appears on their feed, they hurriedly, sometimes in a disengaged fashion, tap through all stories and recent posts, as they’re all located in the same place.

X is a little different. Users generally see one tweet at a time; there isn’t the same instantaneous story element to it. So, small business social media managers do not need to deliver the same levels of output to remain relevant in a user’s feed.

Having said this, tweeting daily is still advisable. Tweeting daily allows businesses to stay active in users’ feeds without overwhelming their audience; it provides opportunities to experiment with different types of content—whether it’s promotional material, thought leadership, or engagement-focused posts like polls or questions.

In addition to daily posts, business owners should take advantage of X’s conversational atmosphere by engaging in trending dialogues, retweeting relevant content, and responding to comments or questions promptly. This real-time interaction can help build relationships with the audience and establish a more authentic, relatable brand presence.

Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash