Not that long ago, Twitter updated its advertising platform with the introduction of 'promoted tweets.' These messages are tailored by you, the tweeter, for individual users based on their interests.
'Promoted tweets' appear 'natively' within users' streams. This means, as the users you targeted watch their news feed or do organic searches, your tailored tweet appears within the content they're viewing. Talk about targeted marketing! If this platform delivers, you're only going to touch viable prospects that you've selected.
But, does it actually work? To find out, we tested it ourselves. We set a $60 budget for a 3-week period. (When you're dabbling in unchartered territory, it's best to do so conservatively - especially where your marketing budget is concerned. A lot can be learned from a little testing, allowing you to make educated decisions rather than taking shots in the dark.)
The overall results were impressive.
While the campaign itself had less than a 1% follow rate, we actually saw almost a 50% increase in followers. How? For every 1 person who followed us due to the campaign, 1 - 2 of their followers also followed us.
This means our paid reach took our organic reach and blew it out of the water.
Additionally, we also saw a crazy growth in our retweets and favorites. Since our campaign, our retweets have increased by 100% and our favorites are up by 28%.
For a $60 campaign, we got a lot of bang for our buck!
What do promoted tweets include?
The same things as a normal tweet. They're 140 characters and can include hashtags, links, images and video.
Can users interact with promoted tweets in the same way? Yep! Users can favorite, reply to and retweet promoted tweets.
Who sees your promoted tweets?
In some ways, that's up to you. You can promote tweets that were published organically. These tweets live on your profile's stream. Or, you can promote unpublished tweets that are only seen by your targeted audience. However, it's important to remember that promoted tweets can be favorited, replied to and retweeted - increasing their reach beyond your targeted list.
Also of Note: We found our promoted tweets received the majority of their impressions within the first four days of our campaign. This suggests Twitter makes a bigger push early on and that you will get a bigger bang for your buck by doing multiple, four day campaigns rather than one long campaign.
We're going to keep testing promoted tweets and we'll share what we find with you. If you have any questions, comments or experiences to share - we'd love to hear about any and all. Shoot us a note or better yet a tweet: @rwlDesign
