So now that we understand the Twitter app platform with a little bit more detail, the next step is really understanding the different types of ads that exist on the platform. Really, the big king when it comes to Twitter ads are promoted tweets. Think of promoted tweets as an injection. So we have the ability to choose who sees our message, even if they don't follow us on Twitter, right? So here's an example for a fictitional company called Barista Bar, and Barista Bar is a local coffee shop. It can decide to target people in its geographic area, and inject this message into the timelines of people that live in that area. Again, whether they follow the brand or not. So promoted here means injecting the content into specific news feeds of the people that we specify. Those specifications are done through the ad targeting parameters. Promoted tweets can be bought in a wide variety of ways. We can pay per milli or the CPM model cost per 1,000, is another way to think of it. Cost per 1,000 is really the cheapest way in which we can do Twitter ads. We are paying a flat rate per 1,000 people that see this tweet. It works for awareness, but probably isn't the best use case for specific results. So if we'd like to drive people to our website or we'd like to gain followers or we'd like to gain engagement on this tweet, then we really probably want to consider another model. But if awareness is the goal, if we have this local coffee shop and all we'd like to do is promote it and get its awareness up, then the CPM model can't be beat. It's affordable and it usually costs just pennies to get 1,000 people to see a message. If that is really all we want, then this could be a model to consider. So, when you're considering how to promote a tweet, the first thing to think about is do I want to derive a specific business goal or am I okay with just making people aware that my product, service or business exists? If you're okay with awareness, consider the CPM model. If you'd like to drive a specific goal such as a click to your website or gaining a follower on your Twitter account, then you'll want to consider the cost per action model. Cost per action again is only paying for a specific action. So, if the cost per action for this tweet is $2, you will pay $2 every time someone clicks that chat to find the perfect cup of coffee button at the bottom of this tweet. If we think about our coffee example, if folks are talking about caffeine or espresso or some type of latte, even a few times in the history of their Twitter account, that could be an indication that they're interested in coffee and therefore that targeting approach may work very well. Twitter also provides the ability to target by interest in gender. But I would recommend you use these features with caution. This goes back to the account requirements of Twitter, and what I mean by that is that Twitter doesn't require that you use your real name. Twitter doesn't require that you divulge your page. In fact, it's very rare for anyone to do so. Twitter doesn't require that you even tell people what your gender is, and so Twitter has ways of inferring these things based off of your behavior and the accounts you follow. But these are inferences and these inferences are not precise. Because of this lack of precision compared to a Facebook where some of these fields are outright required, we might not want to solely target based off of demographics. Instead, a hybrid approach using keywords and interests is probably more desirable. Of course when considering the small business use case, twitter actually really has a nice advantage in geographics. So, Twitter users tend to divulge where they're based in their profile. Although that's not required. They also divulge where they are in other ways. The sports teams that they're root for, for instance, is one indication of whether a user is in one city or another. Another indication is whether they actually opt into the geotagging of their messages. So if I send a lot of messages and I'm tagging them from Pittsburgh, or even just manually tagging that I'm in Pittsburgh locations, that gives a good indication that I'm in Pittsburgh. Twitter when making the decision whether a user is in one area or another often uses a combination of these data points, and as a result the data tends to work pretty well. What I mean by that is that it is pretty easy to reach people that are in the cities that you care about. So, if you are a local coffee shop in Boulder, Colorado, it's easy to reach the people that are only in Boulder or sometimes in Boulder with your Twitter message. This is a key advantage to the platform as far as I see it. Twitter also gives the ability to target people on specific devices. It may make sense to you to only target people mobily. So if you think that people are more likely to go to your coffee shop when they're already out and about, you can make that decision in your Twitter ad targeting parameters, and say "Yes, I want to go after mobile devices," and this and that way will at least at some level give you the ability to look at folks that are just sitting at work for the day. That being said, of course people use Twitter on their phones even when they're at home. But it does give us the ability to think about different use cases, and when people might be using the platform. Of course, you can target by different times of day as well. So you can say if someone's also on their mobile phone and it's a lunch hour, well then maybe they're more likely to visit my coffee shop. The next major type of Twitter ad that was really unique to the Twitter platform when it came out was this idea of promoted accounts. So let's use the local coffee shop example. If you know that a user already follows other local coffee shops or even corporate national coffee shops, it might make sense that you put a suggestion for them to follow your account at the end of some content they see on the platform. This is what Twitter calls an action, right? So if someone follows your account as a result of seeing this ad, it's an action, and as a result that tends to cost more. Remember, awareness tends to be cheaper on social media, specific actions tend to be more expensive. Again, you can target promoted accounts based off of interests. Whether people follow similar coffee shops, geographics, whether people live in Boulder, Colorado, or specific demographics such as gender. Even though CPA is more expensive, it's something to consider if you really want to gain a following that is relevant to your company. The final major way in which you can do advertising on Twitter is by promoting a trend. So trends are unique to Twitter as I said in that they help folks understand what's going on nationally, internationally, and even in the small area. As advertiser you have the ability to promote a trend and actually put it on that list. Promoted trends aren't the most popular way of advertising on Twitter. In fact, it's more certainly the least popular way, intend to be done by big corporate companies such as Starbucks. That being said, sponsoring a trend in a specific geographic region that maps to your business may make sense. If you have something you'd like to celebrate that's timely, then that might make sense for you to promote it as a trend. Keep in mind that not everyone uses the trends functionality, and as such you may not actually have the ability to reach a large number of people if you use the trends targeting option.
