In case you missed it, Twitter recently announced a number of long-awaited improvements to its advertising platform for marketers using the site’s promoted services, including the ability to choose which tweet you promote and reporting of follower growth.
Manually selecting a Promoted Tweet is just what it says, now you can pick exactly which Tweets you want to go out, allowing for a much deeper integration of paid media in any brand’s Twitter strategy.
The follower growth chart (available for Promoted Accounts) gives a snapshot of your Twitter audience growth over time and includes paid and unpaid followers.
So what’s the big deal?
There are three reasons why this is important for the Twittersphere as a whole.
1. Brands asked for more and Twitter listened
When Twitter’s ad platform was first announced many marketers cried foul claiming that Twitter didn’t do enough to provide analytics for its business users, and there was a lack of relevance to promoted tweets.
Users now can now check existing engagement and demographic stats against their follower growth. The update doesn’t turn the Twitter backend into anything like SimplyMeasured, Radian6 or the like, but it’s not that bad. The important thing is people asked, and Twitter eventually delivered. Now if only they could figure out that developer thing…
2. Keeping up with the Joneses
Facebook has been pushing their fairly robust system of advertising dashboards and products for quite a bit longer than Twitter has.
As we see Twitter move into the mainstream as a widely adopted channel for communication, they needed to figure out some way to continue to bring comparable value to their advertisers like the big blue elephant in the room (which many would argue has its own set of issues).
3. The Hashtag Explosion
If you haven’t noticed, hashtags are pretty popular on Twitter. From bringing people together in Twitter Chats to being used as slang or inside jokes, the hashtag is used by nearly every demographic group on the site.
As we have seen with NASCAR Pages and the Olympics in London this year, Twitter is promoting the use of hashtags to connect individuals with one another be it on TV, at sporting events, or just locally to brand positive momentum in their own town. (See #ilovejax)
For a better example, look no further than the X-Factor!
According to Twitter’s Blog:
The show’s new lineup of judges, including Britney Spears, Demi Lovato, Simon Cowell and L.A. Reid, have embarked on a race to see who is America’s favorite “The X Factor” judge based upon who can get their hashtag trending first.
Britney Spears – @BritneySpears – #ItsBritney
Demi Lovato – @ddlovato – #QueenD
Simon Cowell – @SimonCowell – #MrNiceGuy
L.A. Reid – @LA_Reid – #ImEpic
Twitter Self Serve Ads Keep Growing
With the rollout of Twitter’s self-serve ad platform in March, brands large and small have been using the promoted tweets and promoted accounts products to help grow engagement, drive traffic to promoted URLs, and mainly, get more followers on Twitter.
Have you tried out Twitter advertising yet? We would love to hear some success stories in the comments, and you can always check out our Crowdsourced Twitter Marketing eBook for more tips and tricks for marketing on Twitter.