- Advertising only works if potential customers see it.
So, if your audience is on Twitter,
you better be ready to effectively use the platform.
The good news is that compared to competitors
like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok,
Twitter offers some simple ad tools
that anyone can start using right away.
What's up, it's Jamal,
and welcome to the channel.
In this video, I'm gonna show you how Twitter has simplified
the overwhelming options that face online advertisers
to offer streamlined processes
so you can increase your followers
and unlock sales right away.
Before we begin,
go down to the description and download HubSpot's free
how to use Twitter for Business Guide
that will give you the industry tips you need
to optimize your entire Twitter account
to make the most out of your marketing budget.
And while you're down there,
click the subscribe button
and select the notification bell
so that you never miss a chance to learn more
about digital marketing.
So, let's get it.
First, I'm gonna explain the simplest ad method
that you'll want to start with for promoting your brand.
Twitter calls this Quick Promote.
Then, we'll get into more advanced tools
your business can use as you get more confident
in the platform.
Promoted tweets appear in the user's timeline,
just like a regular tweet.
And they look the same except for a small
promoted tag on the bottom.
Promoted tweets can use texts,
links, images, gifs, and video,
just like any other tweet.
To promote a tweet, you have to log into Twitter
using the browser on your desktop or smartphone.
You can't promote a tweet using the Twitter app,
which is a little odd.
I don't know why they did that, but I digress.
First, post the tweet you want to promote,
then tap the tweet activity icon.
Click the option to promote your tweet,
choose location, age, and gender of your target audience.
Twitter doesn't allow you to target promoted tweets
by topics but lets the algorithm do the work
of matching the tweet with the users who want to see it.
If you wanna do your own targeting by interest,
you'll have to use the more advanced Twitter ads,
which we'll talk about in a few minutes.
Finally, select how much money you wanna spend
for however many days.
Your tweet will now be seen by more interested users
than would have likely seen it without the promotion.
I say likely because it's always possible
that an unpromoted tweet could go viral
and get hundreds of thousands of organic views.
Then again, it is very rare for a tweet to go viral,
especially one that's branded.
I'm sure you're wondering,
"Ah Jamal, how do you know that?"
Just check out all of the garbage
that I've been tweeting for the past two years.
No likes.
(Jamal sobbing)
That's why a lot of advertisers on Twitter have developed
unauthorized ways to promote their product in a viral tweet.
We'll discuss those questionable methods
and what Twitter is doing about them later as well.
Viral or not, the overall performance of a promoted tweet
depends on how much users engage with it.
Paying to promote the tweet guarantees
a higher baseline of impressions,
but the rest is still up to your content.
Now, let's talk about the sort of tweet
you should be promoting.
Media brands love promoted tweets to increase clicks
to a piece of content.
If your brand spends money on content marketing,
it only makes sense to spend a bit more attracting eyeballs
to that content using promoted tweets.
Discounts and giveaways can also be worth promoting.
You can't expect much organic engagement with these posts
so paying is the only way to put the messaging
in front of a large audience quickly.
No matter what messaging you're focused on,
here's an important fact
when creating any promoted tweets to get clicks.
A lot of experts will tell you that it's better
to match an image to a tweet with a link
instead of letting Twitter generate a link preview.
However, and this is a big however,
a recent study by HootSuite demolished that myth
by showing that a promoted tweet with a link preview
generated three times as many clicks as a similar tweet
that used a separate graphic attached.
If your goal is awareness instead of clicks,
you can get a lot of engagement
by including a poll in your tweet.
Denny's uses polls to great comical effect,
which increases engagement, improves brand sentiment,
and honestly makes me a little hungry.
You know what I'm saying?
A little 3 A.M Denny's never hurt anybody.
No matter your goal, there's no quicker and easier way
to advertise on social media than using promoted tweets.
But, this is a big but.
What if you've been successfully promoting tweets for awhile
and you're looking to level up your Twitter ad game?
Twitter offers a full suite of ad tools
similar to other social media platforms.
This includes ad formats optimized for business goals,
targeting tools that let you
really hone in on your audience.
There's even collaborative tools
that help you work with influencers
to really capitalize on the promotional power of Twitter.
If anyone wants to collab with me, you know,
I'm just saying my DM's are currently open
and my rate is extremely cheap.
I'll leave it at that.
Starting with the various ad formats,
Twitter offers follower ads to help you
kickstart your account by finding users
who might be interested in following.
This is not the same as buying followers from third parties,
which can bring you a lot of followers quickly,
but results in low engagement
because these bots don't actually care about your content.
Robots... You can't live with them.
You can't live with them.
You can't.
The rest of Twitter's ad formats
let you promote your business and get users to act.
These include your standard image or video ads
with large CTA buttons that encourage clicks,
engagement or app installs.
There's also carousel ads that will let you include
two to six images or videos with custom links for each slide
and moment ads that let you tell a story
through a series of related tweets.
All of these ad formats can be targeted more precisely
inside the Twitter Ad Manager.
You can target specific conversations
that people are having on Twitter,
as well as keywords in general interest topics
you wanna get in on.
You can also hit up users who have previously engaged
with your account,
or you can choose to target lookalike users
who match closely with the followers
of another Twitter account.
In other words,
Twitter won't let you advertise directly
to the competition's followers,
but you can target people who act just like them.
They're doppelgangers, if you will,
you can also target your own followers with Twitter ads,
or you can target a custom audience
taken from your free HubSpot CRM or other source.
And you can generate lists of users
who have engaged with your website or app,
using a Twitter tracking pixel
installed on your platform.
These same tags let you track cost per action metrics
by reporting when users perform an action
on your website or app after seeing one of your Twitter ads.
We've now gotten into the weeds,
but it's important for you to see
that while Twitter offers simple promoted tweets
for beginners, you can graduate to more complex tools
that let professional marketers truly optimize campaigns.
Finally, if you have some serious budget to spend,
Twitter offers timeline takeover and trend takeover ads
that let you dominate the day's conversation
by appearing at the top of user's timelines
and explore pages respectively.
Seriously your ads will just be like,
"What's up nerds? I'm at the top of your feed now."
Bop. Go around slapping everybody else out of the way.
Right?
These ads are usually used by blue chip brands
and are booked directly with the Twitter sales team.
But, even if you don't have tons of loot to spend,
there are a few more ways to advertise on Twitter.
The first is using influencers.
Lots of marketers simply reach out to influencers on Twitter
and pay them offline for a post.
But if you wanna take full advantage
of Twitter ad capabilities in your influencer campaign,
Twitter allows multiple users
to access the same Twitter ads account.
So, you can contract the influencer for a tweet,
then promote the tweet using Twitter's internal ad tools.
And finally, remember when I mentioned brands
paying to promote products in viral posts?
This is done by simply contacting Twitter users
whose tweets have gone viral
and offering to pay them directly
to promote a product in that thread.
This practice has the obvious benefit of
piggybacking on the high level of exposure
a viral tweet can receive.
It also maybe unfortunately, you know,
highlights Twitter's terms of service.
As well as FTC regulations
regarding the labeling of paid social media promotions.
Who's to say?
In other words, it's a bad look for your brand.
But since you've probably seen others do it on Twitter,
I figured I should mention it.
Even when you play by the rules,
Twitter offers a wide array
of effective advertising opportunities.
To learn more about using Twitter for your business,
sign up for the free HubSpot Academy course
on Twitter strategy,
and subscribe to the channel for the latest
on how to optimize all of your digital marketing efforts.
And keep watching right now
to learn how to master advertising on Instagram and Google.
Now, if you don't mind,
I'm gonna go violate a couple more FTC regulations,
all right?
You've heard it here first.
You might not see me anymore.
You know what? Someone's gotta do it, all right?
I'll see you next time.
So let's get a little linky up in here.
You know what I'm saying? Let's link.
♪ Let's get it started in here ♪
Who is that?