Call it the Facebook trickle down effect.
In the wake of Facebook's apparent struggle for a more concrete revenue model, other big-name startups have also launched big-time pushes for revenue.
Just as Facebook's new in-game subscriptions for Zynga games and sponsored search results rolled out, Foursquare began toying with promoted updates, Tumblr launched promoted posts and now Twitter is restricting access to its API, while pushing its own advertising platform heavily.
So much so that when I logged in to Twitter this morning, I saw a bold banner running the width of my feed:
Normally, I assumed, Twitter ads were pushed to brand accounts. Or, at least to accounts that were more likely to pay money to have their tweets pushed higher and their name show up in suggested people to follow. This time, however, Twitter was pushing to personal accounts.
But creating Twitter ads is surprisingly simple. It's a similar strategy to what Tumblr has done with Promoted Posts. Anyone on Tumblr can promote a post. Just check the box before publishing, pay $2 or $5 depending on the kind of promotion you want, and you're an advertiser on Tumblr.
Twitter, on the other hand, is a little more complicated, but keeps with the Tumblr-style simplicity of promotion. Twitter offers two kinds of ads:
- Promoted Accounts
- Promoted Tweets
You'll want to choose Promoted Account if your goal is to get more followers. By paying for a Promoted Account you'll be listed as a suggested account to follow.
Promoted Tweets, on the other hand, are a better choice if you're looking to get a specific message across. Although you can't choose exactly which messages gets promoted, Twitter chooses to promote the most engaging tweets you've sent, automatically.
Here's a step-by-step guide to using Twitter Ads:
How to Use Twitter Ads
First, you'll have to decide where you want to advertise.
In choosing where to advertise, think about your target demographic. If your brand is location-specific, be sure to target your ads to either the Specific Countries Only option, or U.S Metropolitan Areas Only.
A great tool to analyze the location of your existing followers is TweetsMap, which places your Twitter followers on a map of the globe; check the map and see where you can extend your influence.
Next, you need to decide whether you want to promote your account, your tweets, or both.
In step two, you can choose to promote your account in the "Who to Follow" section. Type an amount that you're willing to spend per day in the first box, and Twitter will estimate how many new followers you can expect to get per day.
If you don't want to promote your account, you can skip this step and move on to promote your tweets.
Here, indicate how much you're willing to spend per day, and Twitter will show you how many clicks to expect. To the right, you'll see which tweets are eligible for promotion. You can click the icon to the left of a tweet to remove it from being promoted.
Finally, enter your credit card information, and you're ready to go.
Twitter has made the advertising process painless with this step-by-step method. Although it lacks some of the robust targeting methods of Facebook advertising, it makes up for it in that the process is so straightforward.
Whether you're for or against social advertising, you can expect to see more promoted items as these companies move to generate revenue. For Twitter, the simplicity could mean a higher volume of ads and more advertising revenue. For individual Twitter users, promoted tweets and accounts may turn out to be a point of contention.
Thomas Samph is a product analyst at Grovo.com, an online training and education platform for everything from how to use Blogger to Twitter training.