Twitter introduce Ads for small business to UK

Twitter has launched its self-serve advertising platform for small and medium sized businesses in the UK. Previously, advertising on Twitter in the UK was only available to those with large budgets and a working relationship with Twitter. Advertising in the US was started in April but this the first time that small businesses can advertise outside America. All businesses in Ireland and Canada can also advertise now.

I’ve been fortunate to have access to the platform since the US launch and I can report that it’s very easy to set up and monitor your Ads which come in 2 varieties: Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts. The former enable you to reach a wide and appropriate audience with tweets of your choice. When keywords or hashtags of your choice are tweeted or engaged with  your promoted tweets are placed at the top of users’ timelines. Your tweets can also be placed at the top of search results when users search for your key words. For example, if you’re a sushi restaurant in Cheltenham, you could advertise to people tweeting “Cheltenham sushi”, “Cheltenham restaurant”, “#Cheltenham” and so on. You can also target people by interest and by their interaction with TV shows.

Promoted Accounts allow you to acquire new relevant followers and build your audience. When your account is promoted it appears on the top of the Who to follow section on the left of twitter.com. You can target followers of any Twitter account eg your competitors as well as by interest.

Both Promoted Tweets and Accounts can be targeted by location although at this stage by no means every UK city, leave alone town, is in the database. Bristol is a surprise omission. Both types of ad are marked as promoted.

For Promoted Tweets, the advertiser pays when a Twitter user engages; that is clicks on a tweet, retweets, replies, favourites or follows the advertiser. For Promoted Accounts the advertiser pays when someone follows your account. 

The platform comes with a good analytical tool so you can monitor progress of your campaigns. of followers includes growth of followers obtained organically which is useful.

In summary, Twitter Ads enable you to do more of what you have already been doing on Twitter. Promoted Tweets help you get your message in front of more of the right people and create more opportunities for conversation. Promoted Accounts help you build a quality audience faster.

You can also set up Lead Generation Cards which enable you to obtain a person’s name and email address via a button click. More on this in a future article.

Do you think you’ll be using Twitter Ads? Let me know in the Comments below.

This entry was posted in Blog, Social Media News and tagged Lead Generation Cards, promoted accounts, Promoted Tweets, twitter, twitter ads by Jonathan Pollinger+. Bookmark the permalink.