How much of your marketing budget goes to social media? Have you considered paying for Twitter’s Promoted Tweets service to market your business? Many of my clients ask if they should use promoted tweets in their social media marketing strategy and the answer largely depends on your business structure and target market. Should your business use Promoted Tweets to help get more engagement on Twitter? Let’s take a deeper look at what the service is and what it can offer your business.

What are Promoted Tweets?

Promoted Tweets is a paid service created by Twitter in September, 2011 to “amplify your message with targeting options on Twitter.com and across mobile devices to reach the right person, in the right place, at the right time,” according to Twitter. In a nutshell, your business crafts a attention-grabbing tweet that sums up your offerings nicely and Twitter places it in search results or user timelines. Twitter’s geographic targeting increases the relevance your predetermined target audience sees it and clicks “follow”.

There are two types of promoted tweets: Promoted Tweets in Search and Promoted Tweets in Timelines. Search is used when users are searching particular terms in Twitter’s search field. The promoted tweets will appear at the top fo the results page. Timeline is used to amplify messages to your followers or users who are like your followers. Again, your tweet will appear at or near the top of the page when users log in or refresh their homepage.

Should Your Business Use Promoted Tweets?

This is the golden question. Should you set aside part of your marketing budget for Twitter’s promoted tweets? My answer is yes, you should definitely test out Twitter’s promoted tweets but make sure you do it right.

  • Add pictures, videos and graphs or other visual displays to your promoted tweets to explain the offer and get attention
  • Create a strategic plan regarding the content and graphics you will use in your promoted tweets.
  • Consider your product offerings that are being offered in these promoted tweets and re-evaluate after the promoted tweets are over. How did the strategy work? Did you get an increase in sales?
  • Take a look at what your competition is doing when it comes to promoted tweets. Are they using them? What are they saying?

Overall, Twitter’s promoted tweets service is a great way for your business to establish a strong identity on Twitter according to Hashtags.org, and to promote your services and goods. Twitter’s paid service doesn’t cost much and can go a long way if used correctly. The secret of promoted tweets is to make sure you’re targeting those people who are actually interested in your offerings. Using promoted tweets is also a great way to increase the number of warm leads you acquire from Twitter as well.

Do you have questions about Twitter’s promoted tweets service? Please feel free to contact me anytime at samanth[email protected]. I look forward to hearing from you.