Why Should You Use Twitter Ads?
People send out 500 million tweets every single day and Twitter’s advertising platform is a great way to separate your brand from the noise. Twitter ads are a great way to communicate with users other than your followers that may be interested in your brand.
Twitter ads are a great way to build awareness around your brand and can help get your products in front of your target audience. Data from Twitter suggests that the ad platform’s future is very promising. Ad engagements are up 69% over the last year, coupled with a 28% decrease in cost per ad engagement.
Twitter has introduced a number of new super-clean ad formats. With the hope that this improvement to user experience will drive more users to operate on the ad platform.
In this article, we deep dive into the particulars of why (and how) your brand can benefit from Twitter advertising, including a complete setup and launch of your first campaign.
Now lets check out the different types of Twitter ads.
Types Of Twitter Ads
Promoted Tweets
Promoted Tweets are a pretty straight forward tool for advertising on Twitter. These are the tweets that an advertiser pays to have placed in front of users that don’t already follow them on Twitter.
They are regular tweets that can be shared, retweeted and/or liked. The only difference is that these Tweets will have the “Promoted” label at the bottom as highlighted below.
These tweets will show up on mobile and desktop, at the top of search results, on targeted users timelines and on profiles.
Promoted Accounts
These Twitter advertisements are also known as “Follower Campaigns”. They allow you to target Twitter users who might engage with your content by ‘suggesting’ your Twitter account for users to follow.
These accounts will be promoted in the “Who To Follow” section of Twitter, as well as search results and in targeted user’s timelines.
The “Promoted Accounts” will clearly feature a ‘Follow’ button and will be clearly labeled “Promoted”.
Promoted Trends & Spotlight
These advertisements are promoted with the trending topics on Twitter. They will appear at the top with all the other trending topics and on the ‘Explore’ tab on Twitter Mobile & Desktop.
Twitter has recently launched “Promoted Trend Spotlight” that will help major brand awareness campaigns. Twitter says that Spotlight will compliment ‘Promoted Trends’ with static images, 6 seconds videos and GIFs.
RELATED: Twitter Officially Launches Its ‘Promoted Trend Spotlight’ Ad Option
Your ‘Promoted Trend’ will appear at the top of the trending topics list.
Twitter is all about creating conversations and trending topics is a major feature on social media platform. Trending topics allows Twitter users to click on the ‘Explore’ tab on desktop or the ‘magnifying glass’ icon on mobile to access trending topics.
When users make these selections they will see an organic list with your ‘Promoted’ tweet at the top of the list. Your overall brand exposure will increase as Twitter users start to use your hashtag. This increase in exposure will boost the reach of your campaign and give you additional organic traffic to your tweets.
‘Promoted Trends’ are for bigger brands that carry a heavier weight so they are not accessible through Twitter’s self-serve advertisement platform. If your are interested in learning more about your eligibility or what are the guidelines for starting a ‘Promoted Trends’ campaign, you can check out the article below.
RELATED: Promoted Trends Guidelines
Automated Ads: Twitter Promote Mode
The majority of this article is about setting up your own Twitter campaign based on your business objectives and specific goals.
Before we continue, I want to discuss another option.
Twitter Promote Mode: An always on, booster engine to promote your tweets and profile.
‘Twitter Promote Mode’ is a great option if you’re fairly new to advertising online and you want to gather data or you’re not sure of how much to spend on a campaign. This is option you will seriously want to consider.
The campaign charges a monthly fee of $99/month (USD), plus tax. Once you have set up payment, you will have the option to turn on ‘Promote Mode’ and your first ten tweets of everyday are automatically promoted to your target audiences.
These tweets will also have to make it past Twitter’s quality filter. Replies, Quote Tweets and Retweets will never be promoted. So before you begin, make sure that you have at least a week or two of Tweets planned out for promotion. This will also include a Promoted Account campaign.
If you do decide to use Twitter ‘Promote Mode’ you can expect to gain 30 or more followers per month. As well as reaching 30,000 or more Twitter users per month.
Now lets deep dive into Twitter ads set up.
How To Advertise On Twitter: A Step-by-Step Guide
1. Setting Up Your Twitter Ads Account
If you’re just starting to use Twitter ads you’ll need to setup an account. It’s fairly easy and you’ll want to log into your Twitter account or Google Twitter ads.
Either avenue will take you to business.Twitter.com. You’ll want to click on ‘Create an Ad’, you’ll have the option of selecting Twitter ‘Promote Mode’ or creating your own Twitter ‘Ads Campaign’
Click ‘Twitter Ads Campaign’ and get started.
After making your selection you will be able to create your first ad campaign.
2. Choose Your Objective
Choosing your objective is an important element that you need to decide on when beginning your ad campaign. Twitter campaigns are based on achieving certain business objectives that include brand awareness, consideration and conversions.
These objectives could be considered gaining more followers or increasing your reach. Choosing an objective for your Twitter ad campaign will require careful examination because the campaign objective that you choose will determine how much money you will spend on achieving your overall goals.
For the sake of your ROI, before you start advertising on Twitter be sure to have all your objectives, goals and social media agendas in place.
You will be able to choose from the following options:
Awareness: This will place your Promoted Tweets in front of the maximum amount of people. This objective is billed per 1,000 impressions.
Tweet engagements: This objective will inflate the total number of engagements that your Promoted Tweet receives. You will be billed based off of all engagement types, this will include — retweets, replies, and so on — this is only for the original engagement.
Followers: If you’re interested in building a following on Twitter, this objective is for you. You will be billed for each new Twitter follow you receive, this doesn’t include other engagements such retweets, likes and comments.
Website clicks or conversions: This objective will send Twitter users to your website and increase overall activity. You will be billed per click.
App installs: This objective is for businesses or brands with apps. This will direct Twitter users to install your app and you will be billed for each app install.
App re-engagements: This objective is great for engaging users who already have your app. This type of campaign will direct users open your app and use it. Overall, billing you for each Twitter user takes action and clicks on the app to open it.
Promoted video views: This will direct users to watch your videos or other content. You will be billed for every view that takes place on Twitter.
In-stream video views (pre-roll): This objective is for short video advertisements at the start of other Twitter videos. These are placed inside of Twitter’s premium content partner’s videos and you will be billed for each view.
Once you select ‘Twitter Ad Campaign’ you’ll have the option to select your objectives. Be sure to give it some thought and remain open to future campaigns. Experimentation is key.
Choose the objective that you would like to achieve through your campaign.
After choosing your objective, you will be directed to the ‘Create Your Campaign’, you will have the option to name your campaign, setup your payment options, create your budget and choose your campaign start date (schedule it for later or right now).
Your overall budget will be displayed as well. You will have the choice to pay per day or for the whole campaign or both.
You can decide the total amount; specific bid amounts will be determined in a later step.
Click Next, once you’ve made all your selections.
3. Setup Your Ad Group And Bidding
In this step, we will explore how to setup ad groups. What exactly is an ad group? It’s a sub-category of your ads campaign. Since this is your first Twitter ads campaign, you will want to stick to one ads group to gather data.
Once you have completed this ads campaign, you can begin to divide your objectives to target different audiences. Use different content or test different budgets and timing.
Check out the graphic below from Twitter to explain, how campaigns and ad groups work together to achieve your overall business goals:
On the next tab, you’ll have the option to select how much you’re willing to pay for each engagement. If you select the ‘automatic bidding’ option, the bidding process will be automated by Twitter, to produce the best results for lowest price based on your predetermined budget.
This is a great option if you’re just getting started on Twitter and want to gain an understanding of Twitter’s automated bidding process.
The interface will also show you what other ad campaigns are paying if you want to control the bid amounts yourself.
Click Next, once you’ve made your selections.
4. Choose Your Creative And Ad Placement
This is where you will have the option to create new tweets that are specifically tailored to your campaign or you can select from a list existing tweets to promote.
You will also have the option to choose where your ad will be placed on the right side of the screen.
Click Next, once you’ve made your selection.
5. Target Your Audience
To maximize your budget, you will want to target the right audience. Twitter provides a number of options to help you in your selection process.
To begin, you will want to start with demographic targeting. This metric defines your audience by location, age, gender, technology and language.
Targeting by locations allows you to key in on a specific geographical area such as a city, metro area, area code or a whole country.
The technology component target those in an audience by mobile device (carrier, or OS version).
You will also have the option to target users based on specific features of an audience. This includes behaviors, interests, events, keywords and even TV shows Twitter users have tweeted about.
Twitter will also provide you with an interface that will provide an estimated audience size that changes with your adjustments to give you idea of targeting options within your campaign.
You will also have the choice to upload your contacts or list of people to target (email list, etc.). You can also select to target people who are similar to your follower base.
Click Next, when you’re satisfied with your selections.
6. Launch Your Campaign
As you conclude, review all of your choices within the campaign tabs and select Start Campaign to launch your ads campaign.
An alternative method: Quick Promote
If you have already selected which Tweets you want to promote and don’t want to setup all the targeting options, you can select Twitter ‘Quick Promote’.
This is an easy option that lets you start a Twitter ad with a couple clicks.
For artists, musicians and content creators your brand is the first encounter that you will have with potential followers. Before they make the decision to follow you or engage with your content they will ultimately be judging you based off of your Twitter profile.
This fact alone is why your personal brand should take the lead when developing a social media strategy for your career.
A solid brand is crucial when building your network and creating rapport with other artists, labels and industry regulars. The ultimate goal is to have your brand resonate with your target audience, no matter it be fans, label executives or concert promoters.
If branding yourself online is one of your goals, Twitter is the perfect platform to get started. Although, there is a lot of noise when it comes to Twitter’s timelines. It is fairly easy to join a community and create value for your brand.
This is why Twitter continues to produce value and create opportunities for content creators.
RELATED: How To Master Twitter: Always Begin With The Fans
There is a wealth of creatives, artists and music professionals to connect with through the sharing of blog posts, websites, news, videos, photos and podcasts.
The convenience at play is that there are millions of people using Twitter as a marketing platform. So there are plenty of examples to take note of, as well connecting and working with artists, musicians and content with similar mindsets.
If you’re interested in learning more or joining the conversation feel free to sign up for our monthly Newsletter, join our Facebook group. You can also follow me on Twitter!
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