How to Get Started with Twitter Advertising – Now open to Businesses of all Shapes and Sizes

If you are interested in getting more followers for your Twitter account, increasing exposure for your business, and promoting your tweets to a relevant audience – then you can give Twitter Advertising a try. This is great for business as it allows you to connect with the people that matter and gives you powerful context to connect your message to what’s most meaningful to your customers.

But before you go to set up your campaign, it’s useful to know what your objectives are so that you know which option is relevant to you…

So – what are your options for advertising on Twitter?

The process for creating your own Twitter Ad Campaign is very simple. It’s divided into two categories: Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts. (A third ad product is also – Promoted Trends, but this isn’t available to small businesses.)

Promoted Tweets

Promoted Tweets allows you to highlight a specific message or product that you want to get more exposure for on your profile and throughout Twitter – this is great for if you are a marketing company managing much sharing content, building awareness and building your brand or business voice.

These are regular tweets which you want to reach a wider group of users or to spark engagement from existing followers. There’s also the added bonus of reaching more people who are interested in your business – therefore these ads should be used to promote your best content. It may be a piece of research you’ve published, your latest blog post or a product or service launch. Again, think about what you are trying to achieve, the audience you need to get in front of etc. – prior to promoting tweets.

Do keep in mind that people will see that it is a promoted tweet as they are clearly labelled as ‘Promoted’ after they have been paid for.

 

Setting up your Promoted Tweets

At the set up point you can fix the amount you’re willing to pay every time someone retweets, replies, favourites, follows or clicks on your tweet. And once that budget has been utilised – your tweets will simply stop being promoted.

Promoted Accounts

Promoting Accounts on Twitter allows you to promote your account as one to follow – an example of this is when you log in to your Twitter account and go to your main dashboard, to the left of your Twitter stream is the box which shows suggested users to follow based on your interests.

Promoted Accounts give your Twitter profile more exposure and helps you build followers who are potentially more targeted for you / your business – so if your goal is to achieve new followers then this is your most efficient method,  as you’re helping more people to discover you, your brand, business or cause.

So now you know the Advertising Options Available – How do you become a Twitter Advertiser?

When looking to set up a new Twitter Ad campaigns, all you need to do is log in to your Twitter account.

Click on the gear icon on the top right hand side of the toolbar to see the dropdown menu and then click on Twitter Ads. You can also type the following URL directly in your browser ads.twitter.com.

You’ll then be prompted to enter the username and password for your advertising account. Use the same username and password as you do on twitter.com. Once you’ve signed in, click on ‘Create New Campaign.’

Twitter then gives you two options (which we mentioned earlier) – to create Promoted Tweets or to create Promoted Accounts. To set these up all you have to do is click on the link and it will guide you through the steps to setting it up. (Trust us – it really is very simple).

And that’s it.

We hope this blog post has helped you figure out whether Twitter Advertising is for you. All you have to do is decide on key objectives – it may be:

• Lead generation
• Brand exposure
• Product / service launch
• Gathering support for a cause

Whatever your objective, perhaps Twitter advertising is going to help you achieve your goals – so simply figure out the right advertising option for your business – and wait for the results!

Stay tuned for next week’s blog on Twitter scheduling, which is available for anyone looking to advertise on Twitter.

Written by Michelle Carvill