For social media, if a year is a long time then a decade is as far away as the Precambrian era.
A decade ago, posting links to Twitter was a good idea.
But things change and evolve.
I was reminded again that links on the platform now known as X are not what they were.
What have they done now?
In the most recent shift, Twitter have stopped including headlines from websites when the image is presented on the platform.
This means that a tweet with a link now looks like this.
In the general scheme of things, this is a fairly minor change in presentation.
But it does mean having to take account of the loss of the headline when posting content.
Why are links penalised?
All platforms want to keep you on the platform for as long as possible. When you realise this you’ll realise why the reach for links is lower.
To be fair links aren’t just penalised by Elon Musk they are pretty much penalised by all social sites.
Various surveys show that links are penalised on the platform. They don’t perform as well. The platform is pretty unique in banning links to other social platforms.
So what can you do?
Firstly, there’s always building a thread to help you tell your story which tends to get rewarded. A thread in this context being a series of connected tweets rather than Threads the Meta-launched Twitter rival.
Or post it long form.
The great man confirmed as much.
Mind, the ability to create Twitter notes is not available to everyone which is tricky.
Yes, this does involve more work and no, not every social media management tool can allow you to post threads meaning that you may have to do so natively.
Besides, the answer may be in telling the story on the platform itself rather than asking people to go somewhere else for it. The aim here isn’t to drive traffic to a particular website. You are not a web manager. The aim is to put the right information in front of the right people at the right time.
The bottom line is if you want people to see your message then you’ll have to change and evolve.