Dear promoted tweets, accounts and trends, are you worth it?

In assessing the potential value of Twitter “promoted tweets, accounts and trends” to a public relations program I started to think of some of the other paid tactics practitioners employ to get their messages to the masses.

PR practitioners will pay media wire services like Canada Newswire or Marketwire to distribute press releases to target media outlets.  The cost depends on the number of regions (provincial, national, international) to be distributed to and length of the release.  A social media release is extra (approximately $700 more).  A practitioner can opt to write matte stories and have them distributed by News Canada.  Then there are a number of ad and marketing initiatives like Advertorials, Google Adwords, Facebook ads and pages, YouTube channels and Twitter ads, to name a few.

Promoted tweets are tweets that can be targeted and customized to a specific audience geographically and/or to those with specific interests and demographics.  These tweets are pushed to the top of a user’s feed as well as a relevant search result. 

Promoted accounts are pushed to a target user’s “who to follow” list which allows a company or brand to build their online community.  

A promoted trend pushes a trending #hashtag or term to the top of a user’s trending topics list.  The concept of buying in to this is much like the aforementioned paid services discussed above, to optimize the medium to reach the best possible number of eyeballs that could potentially see your message. The value add of promoted tweets and accounts is that they are priced on a cost-per-engagement basis (anywhere from $0.80-$1.50 per click of every tweet, retweets are free and $2-4 for every click to follow the account).  

Promoted trends cost approximately $45,000 CDN but will be the only promoted trend for 24 hours. 

When you consider the cost of instant engagement, the potential for building an ongoing relationship with a large mass of people worldwide and bypassing the traditional media gatekeepers, there is no question of the value of these ads.  The ability to tell your story the way you want to tell it over time (through multiple promoted tweets), to see evidence of real time engagement in order to measure what people are resonating with and adjusting messages accordingly, building a community in which you can foster direct contact with your audience, to share exclusive information with, getting them to want to know more, to feel informed, valued and special through offerings or contests or to simply bring awareness to your cause, event or brand is simply immeasurable.

Still not convinced? 

Imagine the ability to incorporate these tactics to a crisis or issues management program.  A message or response to a crisis can instantly be pushed out to the public instantaneously.  Faster than calling up a reporter to write a story, writing a release and distributing it or producing an ad for print or broadcast.  A company can get their message out before anyone else can report their understanding of the issue or their take on it.  They can be their own voice telling the public what they are doing about the situation and when they have rectified the problem diminishing the potential harm to their company’s reputation.

Click on the image below to read how one company used promoted tweets to respond to a negative article about them in the New York Times.

If done correctly, these ads can create an ongoing mass conversation the media wouldn’t be able to ignore.  The media will take notice of a topic if the public is taking notice which in turn will empower them to want to join the conversation by covering the story and further keeping the conversation alive and increasing awareness even further.  The key is to have the personnel to keep the engagement with followers going and be able to respond quickly if a conversation does not go as planned.

The potential to reach more people in a meaningful way in a space they are readily accessing is pretty valuable when the need for impressions is so important and competition to maximize exposure and break through all the noise of today is so great.