Mastodon: What is it and How Does it Work?

Let’s face it, we live in a society where most individuals are addicted to social media. With all the uncertainty about the future of Twitter, one of the most popular yet controversial platforms, people are seeking out new social media platforms as possible alternatives for their fix. Perhaps you have heard of one of those emerging new social media platforms, Mastodon. Mastodon has actually been around since early 2016. However, it has blown up recently since Elon Musk acquired Twitter. When Musk acquired Twitter, Mastodon’s user count jumped from around 380,000 to over 2.5 million in less than two months.

How Does Mastodon Work? 

The biggest difference between Mastodon and Twitter is that Mastodon is decentralized. The  Mastodon social media network is made up of a bunch of independent servers that are organized around specific themes, topics, or interests that a user selects to join. Where platforms like Twitter and Facebook are centralized and owned and operated by a single company, Mastodon is made up of thousands of independent servers. Each server is typically dedicated to one specific topic or industry. Outside of that, you can still do nearly anything you can on Twitter, including following people, replying, engaging, and posting photos, videos, and comments yourself. Once you select a server to host your profile, you can interact with anybody on Mastodon, not just that specific server. The biggest advantage of Mastodon is this enhanced user experience though. When you join, you are connected with other users that share your interests and your timeline will feature posts and conversations surrounding topics you are interested in. It is much easier for users to filter out topics or conversations they are not interested in.

How Can Businesses Use Mastodon?

While Mastodon has some unique features that can benefit a user’s experience, the platform is not as beneficial for businesses. Because of the individual servers, businesses can not just go through a single platform to market themselves. Mastodon is run by a non-profit so they do not allow ads or push profiles above others. However, there are still a few ways a business can take advantage of Mastodon’s social media growing in popularity.

Market Research – Searching for a specific topic on Twitter is an unorganized mess. Mastodon’s separate servers create a self-contained community with a much better ability to search hashtags and find organized thoughts on that specific topic. 

Influence Marketing – While a business can not boost its marketing and profile like on Twitter, you still can run affiliate marketing and sponsorship like any other platform. A company can still reach out to accounts with large followings to form partnerships. 

Create Your Own Community – If you are struggling to be seen within an established community on Mastodon, you can create your own. While much more involved than just creating a Twitter account, businesses can run their own server on Mastodon, giving them complete control over the community. You can approve accounts, moderate the content, and steer the conversation. This allows you to Interact directly with your community and your customers and give your audience a unique brand experience. If done correctly, this can be an incredibly powerful marketing tool. 

Social Media Marketing 

No matter what social media platform your company operates on, beMarketing has an expert team ready to take your social presence to the next level. We offer our customers a dedicated team to handle your social media content, community engagement, reputation management, paid advertising, and more. To learn more about our social media strategies and services, give us a call today!