Twitter Ads: How to Advertise With Twitter

Are you curious about Twitter ads?

Want to discover the benefits of Twitter advertising?

To explore what you need to know to get started with Twitter ads, I interview Neal Schaffer.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode, I interview Neal Schaffer, author of Maximize Your Social and co-founder of the Social Tools Summit. Neal also runs PDCA Social, a social media agency.

Neal explores Twitter ads and what marketers need to know.

You'll discover some of the differences between Twitter and Facebook ads.

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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Twitter Ads
Why You Should Consider Twitter Ads

Neal says that like many social media marketers, he's advertised on a number of different social networks, including Facebook and Twitter.

When creating a social media strategy, Neal explains that marketers generally look to a consumer-facing platform. Most often this means Facebook, but could also include Instagram, Pinterest, or Snapchat. However, Twitter can go either way. It has a community of a few hundred million passionate people and is the place to connect with the media.

Neal explains how he did A/B testing for a client with Facebook and Twitter ads that revealed it's more difficult to grow organically on Facebook than on Twitter.

A majority of the budget was spent growing their Facebook community, while a smaller portion was dedicated to building a smaller Twitter community. After a few months, the Twitter audience had grown 30% to 40% (with no additional budget), but the Facebook audience wasn't growing because of the way EdgeRank works.

Neal discusses the two different types of social networks for businesses: networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn where you can't engage with others as your business, and networks like Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat that let you engage as your business. On the latter type, your company can do a lot more organically than it can from your Facebook or LinkedIn company page.

If you've been putting all of your advertising eggs into one social media platform basket, Neal suggests doing A/B testing to explore other possibilities.

Twitter has a lot of benefits, one of which is connecting with mass media and journalists since it's where people go to find news. Neal says that after three and a half months of primarily advertising and marketing on Twitter, The Dr. Oz Show reached out to feature his client.

Listen to the show to hear more about the power of Twitter for live events.

The Difference Between Twitter and Facebook Ads

With both Twitter and Facebook, you advertise on the networks' real estate. On Facebook, ads appear in the news feed, and on desktop in the right-hand frame. Based on his and other Facebook marketers' experience, Neal thinks placing ads in the timeline is best. Comparatively, ads on the right-hand side don't seem as effective.

On Twitter, ads only appear in the timeline, just like on Facebook mobile, and "Promoted" appears in the tweet box.

Neal shares two things he finds interesting about Twitter advertising.

First, since advertising space on Facebook and the newer networks is in high demand, there's less supply. That means it's more expensive to advertise on these networks. Because Twitter has a lot more ad inventory available to promote products and services, Neal believes it's a little more cost-effective.

Second, Neal finds Facebook ads are always changing, and the interface can be very complex. In comparison, the Twitter dashboard and ad interface make it easy to create ads. There's one screen and you know where you are at a...