Posts Tagged ‘new features’

This week, Twitter introduced “Promoted Tweets” as a new way for businesses to advertise on the popular microblogging sites. Utilizing the same model as Google AdWords, Promoted Tweets will allow a business to pay for their selected tweet to be shown at the top of a search result page.  Currently this program is in the trial stages with only a few businesses (such as Virgin America and Best Buy) participating at this time.

How Does the Promoted Tweets Program Work?

A company or brand will write a tweet and mark it “promoted”.  Then using a payment process that has yet to be defined publicly, an amount will be paid and search keywords will be added.  When a Twitter user searches for one of the supplied keywords, the tweet will be at the top of the list before any non-paid tweets.

How Long Will a Promoted Tweet be Featured?

Details are a little bit hazy on this part of the program, but Twitter has said that quality and “resonance” of ads will be considered.  The better the quality of the ad, the longer it will be featured.  Once the tweet no longer resonates with a certain number of Twitter users, the tweet may become a regular tweet and enter the Twitter stream.

What Are the Benefits of Using Promoted Tweets?

The largest benefit is that your tweet will not immediately disappear into the vastness of Twitter.  Tweets on popular subjects sometime spend less than a minute on the front search page for that term.  Using Promoted Tweets means your tweet will be there when a user searches for your keyword.

What Are the Disadvantages of Using Promoted Tweets?

It seems that Twitter still has a lot of details to hash out, so it’s hard to answer this question definitively.  One reason that social media marketing works is because it connects the customer directly to the company or brand. Promoted Tweets does not seem like it will be a valid substitute for actually interacting with your customer base.

There is also a growing backlash of the Twitter community claiming that this program is counter to the spirit of Twitter where every user is even. However, controversy when a new ad program begins is not a new phenomenon.  Google AdWords and Facebook Ads both had resistance from users which has all but disappeared after implementation.

While it is still somewhat unclear how beneficial Promoted Tweets will be to businesses in the long run, it is an interesting new offering from Twitter.  If it is embraced by the users and done tastefully, Promoted Tweets will create additional interaction and engagement with current customers and enlarge a company’s customer base.