B2B Twitter Alternatives: Mastodon, Post & Others Offer New Marketing Opportunities

5 plus top B2B marketing Twitter alternative social media platforms woman with laptop image

Where are B2B marketers turning to fill the void an increasing number of brands are facing having paused or left the Twitter platform?

Increasing numbers of brands and users have turned away from Twitter since its recent ownership change and subsequent top-down shifts in some of the platform’s fundamental policies.

Mainstay B2B brands have joined their B2C counterparts in either taking a temporary break from publishing and advertising on Twitter, or in some cases pulling the plug entirely.

This has led B2B marketers into an unusual period in the history of social media — one perhaps not seen since Google’s Plus platform shuttered its doors in April, 2019.

Growing numbers of B2B marketers have found themselves seeking out Twitter alternatives, hitting just at the traditional time of end-of-year budget surpluses. For some these have combined to usher in a newfound period of taking a previously unheard of look at freshly minted social media platforms or alternatives that haven’t yet seen mainstream usage by B2B brands.

New platforms Mastodon, Post, Spill, and Counter.Social along with existing social platforms such as Reddit, Discord, and others are in the spotlight of B2B marketers — each with unique strengths and challenges.

Let’s jump right in and take a look at some of the top Twitter alternatives available now to B2B marketers and brands.

1 — Mastodon Woos Marketers

Mastodon is an open-source social media platform that has blossomed from a relatively small user base of just over half a million when Twitter ownership changed to recent estimates of over 3.5 million.

Central to Mastodon’s charter is decentralized ownership and operation, through the use of multiple servers

Microsoft presently has at least two verified accounts on Mastodon, and Adobe has had a presence on the platform since February, 2022, however as with other B2B firms, many seem to be primarily placeholder accounts set up for future use should Mastodon gain a stronger foothold.

Audience research tool firm SparkToro has used its Mastodon account to reach new audiences, and drive content to its website’s blog, posting original content to Mastodon.

Marketing author and speaker David Meerman Scott — among those featured in our “50 Top B2B Marketing Influencers, Experts and Speakers To Follow In 2022,” isn’t ready to anoint Mastodon as any sort of “new Twitter” — far from it.

“I think marketers can safely ignore Mastodon. I do not think that this little flurry of interest is sustainable, and I do not think that Mastodon or any other social media service will take the place of Twitter. Throughout history, social networks that pioneer a new model can thrive — Instagram, TikTok come to mind — but copycats like Google Plus fail,” Meerman Scott recently shared with Jennifer Torres in CMSWire’s “Twitter vs. Mastodon: The Marketing Reality”