Ever since Twitter unveiled it advertising model in April this year, internet marketers have been outdoing themselves in trying to make the best of the social networking site. With just four months past, it’s quite hard to be categorical on the effectiveness of the new model. It is not easy to tell how promoted tweets will compare to the down and dirty “tweets” that are no more social than an insurance sales pitch in a wedding party.

How It Works

The company has started on a small scale.  The model involves buying keywords and then paying for them depending on the popularity of the keyword. Promoted tweets will then show up on the search results at Twitter.com. For example, if one goes to the Twitter search box and types “cars in Dubai,” he’ll receive results, with some of the results being “promoted” – just like what happens with search results from search engines.

Twitter seems to be pretty cautious and it is as if they really don’t want to be too intrusive to the extent of putting off Twitter users.  They are experimenting with this model with a few companies that include Starbucks, Best Buy and JetBlue all of which, by all definitions, are companies with deep customer loyalty.

Apart from the search feature, there is another model that was launched in early July. This dealt with the creation of an account referred to as @earlybird, which is about updating followers about the latest advertised promotions available. Twitter users then can choose to follow – and unfollow – @earlybird just as they would with any other user.

As already mentioned, plenty of current “marketing” tweets can be described as offensive at worst and ineffective at best.  This method of cranking out as many tweets as possible hoping that someone was reading them was more like trying to sell stuff by presenting a hard sales pitch in a social gathering.

The new model on the other hand can be compared to a decent shopping mall in a social park where you choose to buy, and not a the case of an insurance salesman following your tail with the  single aim of selling you an insurance product you do not want. As you might know, people hate being sold to.

How To Do It

As of now, guys like you and I don’t stand a chance of using the new platform designed by Twitter. Twitter has limited the service to a number of select users since they are a bit cautious and are still trying to learn the advertising trade.

However, if you would like to try out this service then you need to be warming up by trying organic tweets to see how they will work.

The first thing that you need to do – and which you probably know – is to sign up for a free Twitter account at their home page at Twitter.com. It is always advisable that you use the name that will best identify your business. Since Twitter target the business community and not spammers, they have expressly banned name squatting. This means that if someone has registered your business name in the Twitter account, you only need to contact Twitter to have this sorted out.

Once you have signed up with your name, the next step you will need to take is filing up your account details. You are given a space of 160 characters to briefly describe your business. This will ensure that people will know exactly who you are and what you do when they land on your profile page.

Since Twitter is till trying to understand how it will be able to monetize its site, you have to do it the old way. This means trying to see who the best people to follow are; do not make the mistake of trying to follow everybody. It won’t help you if at all you are following 13-year olds with a view to selling them cars.

The fourth step in establishing a rewarding Twitter campaign involves the writing of relevant ads.
This does not mean writing the crap that advertisers have been writing before. You need to take the transition phase as a period of learning which ads work best on Twitter. If you do it well, you’ll be able to boast, like coke has done, of “phenomenal” results just 24 hours after starting the advertisement.

Another point as we close: if you were planning to dodge the new “promoted tweets” in the hope of spending your money with third party applications that advertise through Twitter, forget it. Twitter has banned all advertisements from third party apps with a view to increasing the focus on its promoted tweets and @earlybird.

As already indicated above, the advertising platform designed by Twitter is still new and very little can be said of the results. All you need to do however is to sharpen your sword so that when the doors will be opened to the rest of us, you will not be at a disadvantage.

About Us
At  Salony Creations – Web Design and Development – a Dubai based company,  we offer services that will help you manage your marketing campaigns on Facebook and other social networking sites such as Myspace and Twitter. Our Specialists will work on your account on a daily basis, educating your fans about your services and products, while at the same time responding to any of concerns that they might be having about using your products or services.
Next week, I’ll be giving you “Five reasons why your email marketing campaign is a flop”

For a free, No-obligation meeting, call us on +971-50-5388406; you will receive answers for any questions that you might be having regarding internet marketing and web design. You can also send us an email at namita@new-reach.com for the same.
We treasure feedback from our readers. As a way of appreciating your feedback, we shall be rewarding any person whose question shall be the heading of our next blog; free web hosting services on  Dubai based Web hosting company Salonyservers.com or free credit to market your product to up to 250 email recipients through our first-rate email marketing software, Quick Email Marketing.com, are up for grabs.

Until next time, have a great and successful week and Ramadan Kareem to you all.