I have recently been clicking on, liking and retweeting several of the ads I see go by as a part of my daily social media routine. I also tend to pay close attention to ads my friends and followers have retweeted or liked and have retweeted and liked many of those ads.
Some of the ads I’ve retweeted have remained on the Twitter feeds I manage for several weeks – since the ads were first released – and have been retweeted hundreds of times.
I retweet and like ads because I’m interested in the content. But I’m also watching ads I’ve retweeted to test how long they stay active and to see where retweet and like numbers go over the short and long term.
I’ve been a heavy Twitter user for nearly a decade. Twitter does a good job targeting ads based on my daily activity, history, friends and followers and a wide range of hashtag and key word strategies I use every day.
This means I tend to see a lot of cloud, data center, big data, sustainable ICT and security and privacy ads from major vendors in these industries.
The ads I am most interested in at this stage of the game are the ones I am seeing from the little guys. Certainly I see ads from smaller players in the industries where I tend to be extremely proactive.
But I’ve also seen, clicked on, liked and retweeted ads from independent consultants such as accountants, analysts, researches and writers. Twitter ads may have the potential to be a bit of a promotional game changer for many of the little guys who are among the early users of the ad program.
The ads may prove to be a valuable tool for acquiring new customers and for building an active community of friends and followers. At the very least, the ads are helping to jump start and expand the visibility of the little guys on Twitter.
It find it interesting that I only pay attention to Twitter ads when I am using Twitter’s web-based platform – and this doesn’t happen too frequently.
I almost always use TweetDeck and Hootsuite to manage client Twitter activities and I’ve been using both of these platforms for as long as they’ve been around.
I’m using Twitter on the web somewhat regularly right now because I am working on several non-established Twitter feeds where I am focused largely on research and credibility-building.
I find search on the Twitter web platform – which is based on Search.Twitter.com, a company Twitter acquired several years ago – to be more effective when I am in strategic research mode.
I tend to largely ignore Twitter ads when I switch back to Hootsuite or TweetDeck where promoted ads have been visible for years.
It will be interesting to see how this potential red flag issue plays out because I know ad visibility is likely priority-one among Twitter users and social media managers embarking on Twitter ad strategies. I also know many of these users rely on TweetDeck or Hootsuite as their go-to Twitter platform.
I’ve managed hundreds of Twitter initiatives for clients positioning in a wide range of industries. I know how to leverage Twitter to build excitement and communities, place key messages, influence search and build strong relationships with influencers, customers and potential customers.
Twitter ads are showing that they may have the potential to significantly enhance many of these strategic capabilities. – Russ DeVeau