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“Would people pay to read my tweets?”
That’s the question all Twitter users with 10,000 followers or more were thinking about when the company provided an overview of its ‘Super Follow’ option in development this week.
As you can see here, as a ‘super’ follower of someone on Twitter, people could theoretically pay $ 4.99 per month to get things like:
- A supporter badge
- Subscriber-only newsletters
- Exclusive content
- Offers and discounts
- Community access
Twitter would seek to further facilitate the Super Follow process by incorporating audience targeting tools into its various functions, as you can see in these screenshots.
Users could run Twitter Spaces that only their super followers could join, post tweets that only their super followers could read and reply to, and share Fleets with their paid audience exclusively. The newsletter subscription element would be integrated into Twitter new Revue integration.
What is interesting, right? It adds a whole new range of options for creating followers on Twitter and could provide more incentives for the most active and popular users of the platform to continue to share new content on the platform, which is actually a key element that is missing on Twitter. experience.
But will users really pay for their tweets?
Honestly, in most cases, the answer is probably no, but then again, perhaps this is the impetus that motivates users to do more with their Twitter audience, creating valuable and unique content to generate additional income.
But it’s similar to YouTube’s top stars: If you tell people that the top-earning YouTuber is a kid who makes unboxing videos, they lose their minds and generally exclaim something on the subject of ‘well I could do that.
If you could. But you probably wouldn’t be good at it.
The illusion of being a celebrity on social media is that it’s easy to get followers and get paid. The barrier to entry is low, the quality of the content is nothing spectacular. Anyone can play some video games in front of the camera and yell a little while they’re doing it, right?
The thing is, while top stars make it look easy, being engaging, creating good content, content that people will come back for, that people will actually pay to see, it’s really very difficult.
You have to be of value to one, either by providing information or entertainment. If the former, is this information that people could get elsewhere? If they can get it for free elsewhere, why would they pay you the same? If it’s the latter, then you’ll want to see strong engagement with your tweets. If your audience likes and comments on your stuff regularly, chances are they will see unique value in what you post, and you may be able to monetize it.
If you’re not nailing any of these things, no one will pay for your exclusive tweets, and this is even before you consider the consistency challenges.
Various polls and polls have shown that there is a fairly strong resistance to paying for the content of tweets. Because now it is available for free and most of it is not that valuable. Really, how would your audience react if you stopped tweeting? Would they miss your content? If you go on vacation, do people ask you why you stopped sharing updates?
The honest truth is that most Twitter accounts are largely replaceable, and if you want to monetize your tweet content, you will need to assess what exactly constitutes your unique value proposition.
Whether that means carving out a niche, writing more original content, conducting exclusive interviews on Spaces. If you really want to make money from a tweet, you will need to consider what value you plan to bring to your audience to justify that additional cost.
Because while it may be tempting to think that ‘hey, if only 10k of my 80k followers subscribe, that’s $ 50k per month * – BOOM’. While it may seem like a no-brainer, if the feature finally launches and everyone starts looking to monetize their Twitter presence, fewer and fewer users will end up making money, and the cream will eventually rise to the top.
If Twitter launches Super Followers, and you’re thinking about doing it, it will pay off to come up with a structured plan of attack, rather than just seeing who might throw a few bucks at you to keep doing what you always do. I have.
I mean, that might work too, but subscription fatigue is real, and not all ‘power users’ and ‘gurus’ are going to get rich on your 280 character cards.
Here are other considerations as well:
- With Twitter users able to request payment from their audience, that could change influencer marketing on the platform and help weed out those with large numbers versus those with real influence. Now, users will be able to literally demonstrate that they can influence audience action, showing that they have X amount of people to pay for their tweets. That could become a key separator in choosing which Twitter influencers brands work with.
- The introduction of non-public tweets will have an impact on the brand’s monitoring efforts, as some mentions will now be hidden from view. The impact it will have will depend on how many users adopt the Super Follow option, but it could be significant, depending on how the process unfolds.
- It could also have an impact on retweets and engagement, as super followers probably won’t be able to retweet those tweets. That could change engagement behaviors more broadly if a lot of people accept it, and followers get used to not having retweets as an option.
- For brands, it will be interesting to see how Super Follows are integrated, or not, in third-party platforms such as Hootsuite, and how they can be managed through the Twitter API. Super Follows might be great for building a brand community, but you’ll need to be able to manage it within your regular workflow to maximize profits.
There’s a lot to consider here, and the option will likely have a significant impact on the broader tweeting experience, in many ways.
But it will be particularly interesting to see how you separate the wheat from the chaff, with many ‘influencers’ potentially poised to take an ego hit when they ask their audience to pay.
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