Twitter is the internet’s go-to app and website for online discourse. Aside from Reddit and Meta (Facebook), the vast majority of those interested in engaging in online discussions venture over to Twitter for both friendly and sometimes not-so-friendly banter. Seize the opportunity to place your ads on Twitter and you’ll engage your target audience in a highly effective manner.
Twitter advertising takes the form of formal ads interspersed between tweets and more covert messaging through a business account. Focus on the three Twitter advertising tips for success as detailed below and it won’t be long until your online traffic increases and your sales spike in unison with that hike in traffic.
Twitter Advertising Tip #1: Strategically Select Twitter Hashtags
The hashtags you add to your tweets amplify their visibility. Do some research to pinpoint the words and phrases your audience is most likely to search for on the web as well as within the Twitter platform’s search feature, then add those words to the ends of posts in the form of hashtags.
Hashtags are beneficial in the sense that they connect your business to those who express an interest in your industry, product or service. Hashtags also broaden your horizons to connect with those outside of your target customer base. Continue to refine your Twitter hashtag strategy by tailoring your use of these keywords to the subtle nuances of your campaigns and you’ll make even more inroads with potential customers.
As an example, giveaway hashtags are memorable and create a positive impression on your Twitter target audience. When in doubt, use Twitter Analytics to pinpoint the hashtags that are the top-performers and implement them across your ensuing campaigns. However, adding more than a couple hashtags per post constitutes oversaturation that makes your tweets look overly manipulative and borderline spammy. Ideally, your tweets will contain three to four or fewer hashtags.
Twitter Advertising Tip #2: Promote Your Ads
Twitter provides a golden opportunity to promote tweets for maximum visibility. Promoted tweets are beneficial to businesses in that they are strategically positioned within Twitter users’ streams or even the search results for optimal engagement. The best Twitter promoted ads steer the online audience to a specific website that serves as an onramp for conversion.
Promoted tweets position selected tweets featured in a marketing campaign to zero in on a specific target audience. Promoted tweets are identified as such with small print toward the lower left corner of the tweet yet they are similar to other tweets in the context of views and engagement. Twitter users can respond to the promoted tweet with tweets of their own and also retweet it as desired. Though a monthly fee is necessary to promote such tweets, the return on investment has the potential to be exponentially greater than the cost. Promoted tweets mesh directly into ordinary tweets, making it seem as though they are informal commentary published to the platform. Such promotions take the form of:
- Regular text tweets
- Image tweets with complementary text
- Video tweets with supplementary text
- Carousel combination images/videos
- Twitter Moments that combine a plethora of elements in the form of a curated story
Alternatively, Twitter Ads are available for businesses that use varying types of tweets to accomplish a singular aim such as heightening brand awareness or expanding a Twitter follower base. Twitter’s advertising technology even empowers users to establish a target audience for the marketing campaign.
Twitter Advertising Tip #3: Incorporate Images and Video
A plain text tweet will make an impact, especially if it is insightful, entertaining or educational. However, tweets featuring images or video are that much more meaningful to the viewing audience. Recognize the fact that a growing number of people are saddled by a shrinking attention span and appeal to that shortcoming with tweets featuring images and videos.
Do some digging into Twitter statistics and nuances for optimization such as the ideal Twitter ad size and you’ll find tweets containing video content receive 10 times more engagement than tweets lacking video. The icing on the cake is that Twitter video ads save businesses a whopping 50% more on each cost per engagement on the platform.
Use a combination of plain text, image and video-based tweets with supplementary text for optimal engagement and your tweets will make a lasting impact with your target audience, regardless of their unique preferences. After all, there is only so much you can do with Twitter’s tweet limit of 140 characters.
Ahmad Rana