Written by ContentPowered.com
Twitter is exploding in popularity. Everyone is getting on the Tweet bandwagon. This social media sensation makes communicating fun. Companies were already finding ways to market products and services through Twitter. The recently created Twitter Ads is fast becoming an essential promotional tool.
The cool thing about Twitter is that it adapts to any culture by being extremely easy to set up and use. It appears that when the company set out to create its advertising platform they wanted to continue with the simplicity theme. That is certainly much appreciated because most people do not have a lot of time to spend trying to figure out yet another online ad system.
Their full-service advertising system requires an invitation in order to advertise. There is also a set minimum amount of money advertisers have to spend.
Fortunately, the new self-serve platform is open to all. To access it simply log into your Twitter account and find it in the menu selection. There are two ways to advertise.
Promoted Accounts
Promoted Accounts is designed to attract more Twitter followers. Building a Twitter following the traditional way is time consuming and hit or miss. Including this as an advertising service is a good idea. It is refreshing to have a legitimate way to add followers without using fake bots or other sketchy tactics.
Go to the “Who To Follow” page to use this option. Select either interested categories or target specific users.
Promoted Tweets
Give any tweet a boost by choosing to promote it to a wider audience. This feature can be used to promote deals, discounts, events, articles or any important content.
Go to the ad platform and select a tweet to promote. The next step is adding budget and bidding details.
Twitter Ad Targeting
Target your ads to get the best return on your advertising dollars. You can target people by shared interest or groups. Or, you can target influential people in a specific industry. The key to using this feature successfully is to consider who would be most interested in your tweets.
Keep in mind that lots of tweets get ignored. Since you are spending ad dollars you want to send tweets to people more likely to read them. Generally, broad categories produce fewer results. However, you can run a test to see which choice works better.
Twitter also gives you the ability to target users by geography and gender. These categories may be helpful if you already know a lot about your ideal demographic audience.
Whatever targeting you choose is going to be applied to all Promoted Accounts and Promoted Tweets campaigns. There is no flexibility in settings.
Setting up campaigns is fairly easy. Selections are located in drop down menus.
Bidding
Bidding on Twitter ads is similar to other online advertising. You arrive at a page that asks how much you want to spend. You then choose a certain amount per day. Next, select the maximum bid amount. This can be a dollar or more. Once you make these selections you will not be charged over the chosen amount.
You may decide to adjust your initial bid based on the amount of competition in your chosen target categories. If you wish to stop an ad campaign, you can do it quickly.
Twitter will give you recommendations on how much to bid, but you can stick to your own choices. The way it works is that the more money you bid the farther your ad reaches. You can make adjustments any time. However, it may be better to wait to see the response you get before changing bids.
Ad Tracking
In order to see how well your ads are performing it is important to check tracking statistics. On Twitter this is easy to do by going to the “View Statistics” page. For Promoted Accounts you will see a graph chart that shows the progression of follower growth for that campaign. For Promoted Tweets you see numbers.
Twitter advertising is an easy and effective way for small and large businesses to reach a targeted market. The platform is very user friendly. The self-serve option lets you select your own budget and bid amounts. This is another option to add to your online promotions.
