Taking Flight in 140 Characters or Less: Twitter Advertising 101
May 12th, 2015 by
Twitter advertising can be a great way to increase your follower base and drive traffic to both your social media pages and your website. It is relatively cost efficient, and it can help you drive the right traffic to your pages. There are three different types of Twitter ads all used for different purposes.
Promoted Accounts
For those of you who are familiar with Facebook advertising, this type of ad is very similar to Facebook fan-building ads. They are used to grow your follower base and draw more attention to your Twitter account. Promoted accounts typically range between $2-4 per follower. This price is dependent upon targeting: the more specifically targeted the ad is, the more it costs. The cost of these ads is subject to results, because you are charged when a user clicks on the ad and follows your account, but you do have the ability to set a maximum budget.
Promoted Tweets
Promoted tweets can be used to promote a specific product or service, and they can also be used to get more attention and exposure for your quality tweets. These ads help promote user engagement and show your content to people who are not necessarily following you on Twitter. These ads are also on a “pay per” basis, but instead of paying per follow, you pay per interaction. “Interacting” includes clicking, replying, retweeting, or favoriting your tweet. These interactions typically cost between $0.50-$2, depending on your targeting. Just like with the promoted accounts, you can set a budget so that you don’t end up spending more than you can afford (due to the awesome success of the campaign, of course).
Promoted Trends
This type of Twitter advertising is really meant for the iconic brands of the world. These will only work for you if you are looking for significant exposure in a short amount of time. Promoted trends are guaranteed placement in the “trends” section and are shown to everybody. The types of businesses that do this appeal to the masses (McDonald’s, Nike, Chase, etc.). Another reason that this type of ad only appeals to huge companies is the large price tag: it costs $200,000 to run a promoted trend for one day.
Targeting
For promoted accounts and tweets, you can get pretty granular with the targeting. Twitter allows you to target based on a multitude of different demographic and behavioral factors. Advertisers can target based on behaviors, gender, region, device (mobile, desktop, or tablet), and more. Social media targeting is a delicate balance because as you get more specific, the price per click or interaction goes up, but it is important to be specific enough that you are targeting people who are likely to convert.
Twitter ads can be a really great way to drive more followers, engagement, and even traffic to your website. Using this ad platform also allows advertisers full access to Twitter analytics so they can see what types of tweets perform the best, which helps them choose which ones to promote in the future. Happy tweeting!
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