Do you even Twitter?
For the past several years, social media marketers have been so focused on Facebook they’ve neglected to recognize the powerful marketing platform Twitter has been quietly building. When you browse the many business and nonprofit profiles on Twitter, it’s hard to find ones that do it well. That’s because Twitter isn’t like other social media platforms, and it requires a unique approach.
What many marketers have failed to appreciate is that Twitter captures the attention of a highly sought-after audience. It provides marketers with unique and effective tools and analytics, and its advertising algorithm delivers exceptional performance for engagement.
Twitter’s Audience Runs the World
While Facebook has the numbers, Twitter has the influence. Twitter’s audience is more affluent, better educated, and more likely to be decision-makers than active users of other platforms. I say “active users” because while LinkedIn lists lots of important people, it’s a tiny percentage who personally engage. While Twitter is essential for elected officials and journalists, you’ll also find executives, policymakers, and celebrities with active profiles that they maintain personally. You can make the case that Instagram has more celebrity influencers, but Twitter has more users who shape the world we live in today. Instagram is a mile wide and an inch deep, while Twitter conversations often have weight and substance.
The world is on a verge of nuclear disaster due to occupation of world’s third largest nuclear power plant in Energodar, Zaporizhzhia region. How long will it take the global community to respond to Russia’s irresponsible actions and nuclear blackmailing? https://t.co/lGHlhALMqV
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) August 18, 2022
And sometimes the world’s most powerful people post things like this.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 19, 2022
Twitter’s Advertising Platform Delivers the Goods
Twitter ad engagement rate and click-through rates are on fire. Part of this is due to the fact that Twitter’s audience is more engaged with the platform than users of Facebook and Instagram. In 2022, users spent an average of around 38 minutes per day on Twitter, while Facebook and Instagram users spent just over 30, according to eMarketer.
Another reason for high performance is that Twitter’s optimization algorithm is so spooky accurate at reading your current engagement and aligning the behaviors and traits of future audiences who will get served your ads. Twitter’s data set is different from Facebook and Instagram. Keywords, hashtags, and handle targeting create a powerful targeting mix that puts your ads in front of exactly who needs to see them. Additionally, the campaign data set allows for real-time, manual optimization in such a way that just isn’t comparable on many other platforms.
Click-through rates of above 3% are fairly common for the campaigns we run, which is high. On occasion, we see them in the range of 10%, which is remarkable for social media. Conversion rates, bounce rates, time on site, and pages per visit all confirm that we’re driving quality traffic. And for multi-channel campaigns, it’s not uncommon for Twitter to drive some of the best traffic of any channel. If you want to extend your reach, you can set up your campaign to not only display on timelines but also on Twitter’s network of thousands of mobile apps and third-party websites on the Twitter Audience Platform. So, this means your ads can be seen on mobile apps outside of Twitter.
Public Relations Professionals Need Twitter
Twitter is the de facto social media platform for media organizations. If you’re in public relations, you need to have your Tweet game on point in order to build and nurture relationships with journalists, sources, and decision-makers.
A journalist without a Twitter handle is like a Jedi without a lightsaber. Their Twitter handles are linked to their articles, in their email signatures, and floating across the screen on broadcast and cable news outlets.
When generating earned media, it’s critical for PR pros to post their hits on Twitter and tag the publication and the journalist responsible. This is a key way to build that relationship and keep yourself top of mind for future story sources and pitching. Taken a step further, a great PR pro should have a process by which to track and engage with their most important centers of influence on a regular basis. We develop engagement frameworks for public relations departments to help them navigate the platform and confidently engage in dialogue that helps establish and leverage relationships that help them do their job effectively.
Give Tweets a Chance
Many years ago in the pre-Cambridge-Analytica-scandal days of Facebook, I would tell anyone who would listen, “I don’t know what’s going on over at Facebook, but get it on the advertising before they shut down whatever it is they’re doing because there’s no way something this good is going to last.” During that time, Twitter languished. If you look for historical benchmarks or other insights into Twitter advertising during that era, actionable results are few and far between. It’s because many marketers ignored Twitter and put their efforts into Facebook, which made sense at the time.
Since then, the good folks over at Twitter have tuned up their platform to be one of the most competitive available, while Facebook has plateaued. Facebook still has a place in your marketing mix, but it’s pretty clear that the platform best positioned to deliver leverage right now is Twitter.
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