Aligning Twitter Content with Marketing Goals: When and Why to Delete Tweets

Twitter is now a must-have social media platform for businesses to create their brand, communicate with customers, and drive website traffic and sales. There are over 330 million monthly active users.

But, many companies find it difficult to tie their Twitter activities to broader marketing goals and objectives. This leaves brands open to getting sidetracked with content that is entertaining but not converting.

One of the most important parts of optimizing Twitter for business is knowing when and why to delete tweets. An intentional deletion strategy helps you maintain a clean, professional and lead-generating profile.

Defining Your Twitter Marketing Goals

Before determining what to tweet or delete, clearly define what you want to achieve on Twitter. Outline both quantitative and qualitative goals.

Quantitative Goals

Quantitative metrics to track include:

1. Follower growth. Set realistic, incremental targets for expanding your audience.
2. Engagement rates. Benchmark the ratio of retweets, likes and comments to reach.
3. Link clicks. Monitor traffic driven to your website.
4. Leads/sales. Track conversions from Twitter.

Qualitative Goals

Qualitative goals describe desired brand lift, including:

1. Thought leadership. Position your company as an industry expert.
2. Brand awareness. Increase visibility and recognition for your business.
3. Customer service. Use Twitter to support customers and resolve issues.
4. Community building. Foster meaningful conversations and connections with a defined audience.

With clear goals in place, you can create purposeful content and evaluate whether old tweets still align with current objectives.

When to Delete Tweets

You may need to delete existing tweets if they:

Contain Inaccurate or Outdated Information

Tweets that contain incorrect or outdated details should be removed promptly to avoid spreading misinformation and confusing followers. You can delete all tweets fast using TweetDelete to clean up your timeline efficiently. For example:

1. Product launch dates or release schedules that have changed should be updated or deleted. Followers may wait for announcements that no longer apply.
2. Pricing for products or services that are no longer accurate should be removed. Outdated pricing undermines trust and credibility.
3. Contact information, office addresses, or staff roles/titles that have changed should be updated or taken down. Customers may try to engage with non-existent points of contact.
4. Changing event dates or specifics should be deleted to stop clients from turning up at the incorrect venue or time.
5. Statistics, figures, or data points related to your industry that have been updated should be refreshed. Stale numbers misrepresent market conditions.

Promote Abandoned Campaigns or Initiatives

If your company has canceled certain projects, pivoted strategic focus, or discontinued products or service lines, promptly remove old tweets touting these defunct initiatives. Allowing outdated promotions to linger confuses followers on your current offerings and priorities.

For example, deleting tweets that teased a product that ultimately got scrapped avoids disappointing interested customers. Erasing old posts about a seasonal promotion that your company no longer runs removes clutter for visitors.

Essentially, delete references to anything you are no longer actively pushing from a marketing perspective. Followers should see tweets that are consistent with current campaigns.

Use Offensive, Insensitive or Controversial Language

Even if unintentional, quickly delete any past tweets with questionable content that could potentially damage your brand image or upset customers. This includes:

1. Off-color attempts at humor that fall flat or that age poorly over time as cultural sensitivities shift.
2. References to outdated stereotypes or broad generalizations about groups of people.
3. Comments that unknowingly diminish or demean marginalized communities.
4. Criticisms or attacks levied against rivals that seem overly hostile in hindsight.
5. Any content that receives backlash from followers accuses your brand of being offensive.

While you can’t undo the initial mistake, deleting inappropriate tweets shows followers you recognize the commentary was wrong and does not reflect your values or views. This helps mitigate reputation damage.

Link to 404 pages

Remove tweets that contain broken links directing followers to inactive website pages showing 404 errors. Broken links signal outdated, neglected web properties and undermine credibility.

Regularly click on links in old tweets to check whether referenced landing pages or blog posts still exist live on your site. If pages have moved, redirect the links. If pages are permanently removed, simply delete the tweets.

Why You Should Delete Irrelevant Tweets

Beyond the obvious need to remove offensive or policy-violating tweets, deleting outdated or poor-performing content provides several benefits:

1. Cultivate a consistent brand image. If people see your current social media campaigns promoting certain products, values or initiatives that contradict past posts, it will seem disjointed. Deleting old tweets that no longer fit allows you to fine-tune messaging.
2. Improve engagement rates. By removing tweets that don’t resonate with followers, you increase the percentage of content that does drive shares, comments and clicks. Higher engagement signals that people find your tweets valuable.
3. Increase clicks to your website. If old tweets primarily linked back to your homepage or blog, consider replacing them with new posts driving traffic to popular landing pages or conversion-optimized pages.
4. Showcase thought leadership over time. Don’t just delete old tweets without a replacement strategy. Take the opportunity to publish fresh industry perspectives that position your company as an innovator. Show how your offerings have progressed.
5. Enhance brand-customer relationships. Ongoing listening and tweeting shows customers you tune into their ever-changing preferences to meet needs. Deleting outdated promotions makes space to nurture current buyer personas.
6. Avoid penalties for broken links or violations. Redirected webpages or shifts in Twitter’s strict ad policies can get accounts suspended. Routinely removing non-compliant tweets keeps you in good standing.

While some companies choose to simply ignore old tweets, inactive accounts with years of irrelevant content undermine credibility for new visitors. A thoughtful deletion approach prevents this.

How Often Should You Delete Tweets?

There is no universal rule for how frequently brands should audit and remove Twitter content. Conduct an assessment when:

Launching a rebrand or major campaign pivot. Overhaul your Twitter presence to match a new brand identity, logo, slogan or visual style. Also, remove outdated promotions for an initiative you’re sunsetting to convey change.

Experiencing sudden growth or increased visibility. If your follower count suddenly swells or a high-profile news mention drives new visitors, delete tweets that don’t represent your best work. First impressions matter.

Changing social media managers. When transitioning to a new community manager, enable them to refine content rather than inheriting stale tweets. But archive any brand assets to retain.

Shifting target audiences or buyer personas. Evolve tweets to resonate with a new demographic you want to capture. For example, enterprise companies adopting a SMB focus.

Launching new products or services. Remove outdated offers that are now redundant and feature tweets educating customers about new solutions available to promote adoption.

Moving into new markets or geographies. What resonates in one country may not translate elsewhere. Adapt Twitter’s approach when expanding target locations.

Marking milestones like work anniversaries. Commemorate achievements by removing outdated company information and raising awareness of growth since founding.

Consistency is key—establish a recurring quarterly or biannual routine for evaluating old tweets against the present strategy.

5 Steps for Auditing and Deleting Tweets

Follow these best practices to remove outdated or underperforming tweets methodically:

1. Use Twitter analytics to identify low-performing content. You can instantly segment tweets by engagement rate, impressions and clicks. Sort lowest to highest and delete the bottom content first.
2. Manually review remaining tweets. Even well-performing posts may now misalign with branding or contain outdated details. Read carefully.
3. Check links and landing pages. Click all links to ensure they direct to active pages, not 404 errors. If pages have moved, update redirects.
4. Delete in batches. Don’t mass delete all tweets at once, or you may unintentionally erase valuable brand assets. Remove in smaller batches.
5. Monitor results. After deleting a batch, watch your Twitter analytics for any notable increases in engagement, web traffic or follower growth. Repeat audit if needed.

Conclusion

With competition for attention on Twitter increasing, brands need to be careful about keeping timelines clean and focused. An intentional approach to post deletion that aligns with marketing objectives enables companies to build more credible, consistent and conversion driven Twitter presences even as business priorities shift in and out of campaigns. 

Over time, sticking to periodic tweet audits and taking best practice steps to remove unnecessary or out of date content will bring about the best audience engagement and commercials results from the platform.