So how do they work?
With the recent data showing that promoted tweets are generating a healthy 22% response rate, and that 25% of users claiming they believe the promoted accounts are relevant to them, I thought it would be a good time to give a quick overview of how Promoted Tweets can help gain exposure for brands online.
There are three ways you can promote yourself through Twitter:
Promoted Accounts
Promoting your account pushes your profile to the top of the "Who to follow" sidebar on the right hand side of the news feed
These work best for brands who are looking to grow their Twitter community or get a new account off the ground by increasing exposure.
Targeting is limited to a country level.
Promoted Tweets
Buying Promoted Tweets pushes your content to the top of news feeds and to the top of search results. They can be targeted to your existing followers (where the promoted tweet will appear at the top of their news feed), or to search results pages (where the tweet appears at the top of a search results page... for example if someone searched for "sheen roast", your tweets would appear at the top). They can also be targeted at a country level.
Promoted Tweets can be targeted to people who have similar location, bio, connections, or content to your existing followers, advertising your tweets in their timelines. For example, if you run the Twitter profile for a local coffee shop and you know you have a rich band of coffee-addicted followers in your Twitter community, Promoted Tweets would be a fantastic way to extend your targeting to a wider bunch of similar people.
Promoted Trends
These are good for driving conversations about one particular topic, event, or campaign (e.g. #NRLFinals, #FBWebinar, #FlowerSale).
The trend is pushed to the top of the Trending Topics menu on the right hand side of users' news feeds and your tweets are pushed to the top of search results for a particular hashtag.
The aim of Promoted Trends is to increase the amount of Twitter buzz for your chosen topic, and hopefully generate a flow-on effect to word-of-mouth conversations elsewhere (Charlie Sheen’s recent… let's say… "popularity" is largely due to the ubiquity of his trending topics on Twitter and the reciprocal effect of buzzwords like #winning being picked up in offline conversations).
At the moment all three options are bought on a CPM basis (per number of impressions), and can be tracked with Twitter's customised Analytics which monitors metrics like clicks, number of follows, and follower details like gender, location, interests and engagement.
These options are available to all advertisers but each campaign still requires approval from Twitter before it can be built and activated. Head here to put your business on the waiting list for Promoted Tweets.
If you think Promoted Tweets would work for your business give us a call on 1300 853 597, or drop us an email at roi@traffika.com.au.
Chris is a specialist in Social Media Strategy at Traffika. Join Chris on Google+.--
Image courtesy of scrapetv.com
