Twitter last week opened up it’s adverts to small & medium businesses within the UK for the first time. The site currently only makes money from it’s adverts so it was only a matter of time before the scheme was rolled out everywhere.

“All you need is a Twitter account and a credit card. You’re in control of your ads, the audience you want to reach, and of course your budget. Best of all, you will only be charged when people follow your Promoted Account or retweet, reply, favorite or click on your Promoted Tweets. You are never charged for your organic Twitter activity.” – Ravi Narasimhan, a product manager at Twitter

How Does It Work

As you can see in the below screenshot, you create a campaign, set a daily budget & enter a max bid. The whole process looks a lot like Facebook’s advertising but so it should, Facebook Ads work. This page shows the impressions your sponsored tweet has made, it’s engagements (people who have clicked the link you provide), what your spend is and the estimated cost per click.

You can see the tweets in a number of places.

• At the top of search results pages on Twitter & their Advertising partners.
• On a users Home Timeline if it’s relevant to them.
• On a Brands profile page or pinned to the top of their timeline.

How can you target people?

Twitters targeted ads are fantastic, you can select other users to target directly by selecting their profiles. Essentially taking away all the hard work of getting those people to follow you & allowing you to direct an advert to them. You can even narrow it down to location & certain interests.

The whole thing is very detailed & it’s exactly how it should be.

Conclusion

Give it a go. Twitter would not of rolled this out if it was at all sub standard. I expect that Twitter Ads will catch up with Facebook & Google Ads in not too distant future within the UK. Check them out HERE.