Twitter has unveiled another way it intends to monetize the website: Promoted Tweets.
Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, shared questions and answers regarding Promoted Tweets on his blog. Stone had this to say about the new service:
You will start to see Tweets promoted by our partner advertisers [Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America—with more to come] called out at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages. We strongly believe that Promoted Tweets should be useful to you. We’ll attempt to measure whether the Tweets resonate with users and stop showing Promoted Tweets that don’t resonate.
Promoted Tweets will be clearly labeled as “promoted” when an advertiser is paying, but in every other respect they will first exist as regular Tweets and will be organically sent to the time lines of those who follow a brand. Promoted Tweets will also retain all the functionality of a regular Tweet including replying, Retweeting, and favoriting. Only one Promoted Tweet will be displayed on the search results page.
There is one big difference between a Promoted Tweet and a regular Tweet. Promoted Tweets must meet a higher bar—they must resonate with users. That means if users don’t interact with a Promoted Tweet to allow us to know that the Promoted Tweet is resonating with them, such as replying to it, favoriting it, or Retweeting it, the Promoted Tweet will disappear.
It’s exciting news for the large companies, but what about the little guys? Promoted Tweets could be a huge benefit to start ups, home business owners and small businesses that need a way to break through all the chatter on Twitter. Much like Google Adwords, Promoted Tweets could provide an amazing opportunity for companies to grow and expand their business.
Perhaps that’s in the works. It’s worth keeping your eye on Stone’s blog to see whether they will expand their partnerships to allow smaller companies to take part. If they do, then it would definitely be worth it to you to incorporate it in your marketing plans.
Twitter is the primary social media website that you want to master, with Facebook being a close second. If Promoted Tweets help with that, and the costs are reasonable, you should use it to your advantage.
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