Online merchants serving civically engaged shoppers will find great promotional opportunities on the growing X platform.
Social commerce and multi-channel sales are the main trends. Marketers in 2025 sell from websites and mobile apps, through marketplaces like Amazon, and through a host of social media platforms, including TikTok, Facebook, and X.
X sticks out
Of this group, X is unique for at least four reasons.
Few competitors. Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, prompting many leading retail and consumer brands to exit the platform and creating a promotional vacuum.
E-commerce brands active on X face relatively less organic and paid competition given the platform’s size — more than 600 million monthly users in January 2025, according to Exploding Topics, a trend tracker.
SMB bias. Perhaps in response to the departure of big brands, Elon Musk announced in 2023 that X’s discovery algorithm would favor small to mid-sized businesses, according to TechCrunch.
Thus, e-commerce SMEs on X may have a relatively larger share of voice than those on other social networks.
Focused on news. X is a civic and news platform. In November 2024, the Pew Research Center reported that “about one in five Americans—including a much higher share of adults under 30 (37%)—say they regularly receive messages from social media influencers.”
On the other hand, X is by far the most popular social network for news in the United States. According to Pew, 85% of social media influencers have an X account. In second place is Instagram, where 50% of news influencers have an account. X is more popular for news than some traditional media.
Mostly men. Almost 59% of active X users are male. According to Exploding Topics, X is the fastest growing social media platform for men as a share of total users.
Keep promoting
X’s recent history and news focus sets it apart from other social networks, but the promotion and sale of products is very similar — with ads, in-store and posts.
Ads on they may be relatively less sophisticated than those on other social platforms, but the features are comparable. Marketers can target audiences; create text, image or video advertisements; and set standard performance targets such as cost per share.
List of products on it is also similar to TikTok and Meta stores. Shopify and other popular e-commerce platforms integrate with X to sync items.
X was testing ways to increase product sales. For example, its Beta Product Drops promote new or limited-run products. And through X Amplify, marketers can add pre-video ads to influence videos, including news.
Live on X is increasingly popular. News influencers often use X to grow their podcast audience and simultaneously stream on YouTube and X before publishing a podcast.
Look for live shopping on X to take off next year.
Posts on can launch products and generate revenue provided merchants know platform preferences. For example, Algorithm X favors posts promoting others on the network rather than linking to a product page.
A better practice is to post the coupon code for comments and followers and send it and the link as a direct message. Such an approach can increase reach and dirty.
Think of the discount as the cost of acquiring customers – similar to advertising. Consider the example below from my t-shirt shop.
Merchants on X can post a discount offer to encourage followers, comments and sales.
Expectation
Promoting and selling products on X may not perform as well as TikTok Shop or Meta Ads – both among the leading social commerce and advertising channels.
Still, X’s unique position as a dominant source of news and current affairs makes it a good second or third social media sales channel for many retail and direct-to-consumer brands. primary an option for brands focused on news, politics and men.
Wassom Watch Co., below, is an example
Brands targeting men or participating in political and civic discussions may find X a productive platform.