Time for Air Cadets to dump Twitter & move to blue sky?

Adult Staff The Staff Mess
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So Twitter seems to be in its death throes & will the potential of it being charged for it will not be usable by most cadets Sqns.

The main alternative seems to be blue sky but I don’t know much about the alternative platforms.

So has anyone used blue sky & looking at creating a Sqn account?

What are the pros & cons & what’s the best way in making best use of the platform?

I’m kinda thinking that linken might be a better social media site that Twitter for that wider engagement.

What’s everyone’s thoughts?

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I’m fairly certain that most people will use Instagram instead, a lot of places already have that set up.

That and Facebook.

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We’ve got to remember that different social networks have different target audiences for us.
X/Twitter was always the “professional” audience and yes, Linkedin might be a good place to focus on in its place but I really don’t know how active the LinkedIn user base is.

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Our unit has Facebook for parents and the wider community whilst we have instagram for the cadets and younger people who may stumble across it.

Both work well if you have regular content.

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I’m very active on LinkedIn and, whilst it has some really good uses, I don’t see individual squadrons working particularly effectively on here.

It would, however, work well at an organisational level, once the issues with organisational comms are fully resolved, with a particular focus on the recruitment of CFAVs and possible corporate sponsorship.

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I think it’s time to dump Twitter, yes. I’m not sure if my school is going to but I have posted nothing on ‘work’ Twitter since the summer break, and nothing on my personal one since 2021.

But… it’s not immediately obvious where we go next. We are also active on Instagram, Facebook and Tiktok but with very different content on each platform. Twitter was great for action shots of cadets on exercise, for example.

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Just read it’s to prevent bot accounts. That’s one good sneaky reason to introduce a fee but our Sqn won’t be using it if a fee is required. We will just stick to Instagram :man_shrugging:

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When Josef Starlink says “bot accounts” he actually means “people that disagree with me (and therefore wouldn’t pay me)” and he’s so worried about those people that he’s not worried about the collateral damage.

Twitter could already be an echo chamber at times, X definitely will be Musk’s own echo chamber.

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:open_mouth:

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Banned on Government devices on security grounds, but MoD still use it; https://www.forces.net/politics/mod-launches-official-tiktok-account-government-ban-announced

Not something I’ve ever used, but I know a lot of cadets do.

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You need different platforms for different audiences.

Facebook is fine for Parents/Grandparents and Instagram works for Parents and to a lesser extent Cadets but the reality of Social Media is that Cadets (and potential Cadets) are all on TikTok and SnapChat.

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PS when I say ‘we’ I mean the school not the CCF - the latter only ever on Twitter to date

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Probably one for @Wizzle to answer.

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I only see twitter used for bumsnorkelling of senior officers.
Our sqn Instagram page is much more useful for reaching new cadets and their families, as well as being more visually engaging

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Social media is always going to be a difficult one. Personally going with the OPs point I think that Twitter/X charging to use a profile would be hard justification of Squadron funds unless you had a lot of followers and connections on there and it was used for the right purpose such as targeted recruitment or updates. A lot of Wings have multiple accounts which could be interesting such as Aerospace/Flying, Music, AT etc.

We have a parents & cadet facebook group but it is locked down and the admin is managed by CFAVs with what content is posted on there. Plus the problem comes that not all kids have/are allowed/are technically old enough for Facebook & Twitter/X (over 13s)

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One of my reason for starting the topic was also to find out more about the newer social media platforms & how suitable they might be.

So anyone using BlueSky or Threads?

What are they like & what are the pitfalls?

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Never heard of BlueSky, won’t touch Threads.

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BlueSky came from within Twitter unsure if the buyout of Twitter included this but doesn’t have a big enough profile. From my perspective Threads a bit of a waste of time, as really just a game of Multi-Billionaires trying to show what they can do. After the initial “big sign-up” threads has dropped off. I am not a football fan but know of Arsenal as a club, interesting X/Twitter the last post of theirs (at time of writing) was 2 hours ago however the same social media on Threads was 5 days ago. With 22million followers on X/Twitter and 1.4 on Threads