In the previous lesson I covered how to build your Twitter network, the right way. Of course there may be other ways to get more followers but I've gone over the ones that worked well for me.

One of the ways to build your network I mentioned in the previous lesson was Twitter Ads. In this next lesson we'll discuss Twitter Ads and how it can help you.

What are Twitter Ads?

Twitter Ads are a paid program that can greatly increase exposure which in turn will give you more followers and more sales. Similar to how Google has Google Adwords that will add your promoted ad at the top or side menu of search engine results, Twitter Ads displays your ad at the top of Twitter search results as well as other strategic areas.

Not everyone has the same objective on Twitter so they have several different types of campaigns you can run.

• Followers
• Website clicks or conversions
• Tweet engagements
• App installs or engagements
• Leads on Twitter
• Custom

There are different ad types you can create and you're able to target a specific audience, which we'll get into later. Setting a budget is easy and you'll be able to place a daily maximum or let Twitter optimize for the best results at the lowest price.

Just some advice. I don't recommend you using Twitter Ads unless you know what you are doing as you can easily waste a lot of money and not get any results for various reasons. You may be targeting too big a market so people who aren't your target are clicking your ads which cost you money. The audience you chose is not right so again, you get useless clicks that won't covert and cost you money. The list goes on.

Why Use Twitter Ads?

Like I mentioned in my previous lesson, Building Your Network, DON'T BUY FOLLOWERS! It's a total waste of money as most of the followers you get in such a short time are "zombie" accounts that are not active and purely used to make it look like you are popular. These are useless because what you really need is interaction. The more people interact with your tweets the more exposure you get. If those zombie accounts never interact then they're good as dead and useless. It's not really about the quantity of the followers as it's the quality of followers that really counts. I would much rather have 1,000 people who will interact and expose my tweets to all of their followers than to have 10,000 zombie accounts who never do anything to help spread my tweets. Buying followers may actually make you lose credibility and in the worst case, get you banned!

If you're REALLY keen on spending money for followers, do it the RIGHT way! Spend your money on Twitter Ads and you'll probably be pleasantly surprised and get even more followers than you thought you would. Twitter will place your ad in strategic locations, especially at the top of people's search results so you'll get maximum exposure. Remember, the more people see your ad the more likely they are to follow, like, retweet, visit a link, etc. If you are selling something, more traffic equals more money! So you definitely want more traffic. Twitter Ads is a great way to get that.

How to Use Twitter Ads

Alright, so I have you convinced that Twitter Ads is a better and safer option than buying followers. So how do we get started? Let's start from the beginning with getting your account setup and walk you through the process

Getting Started

First of all, you need a Twitter account to advertise on Twitter.

Once you have your account click your profile icon on the top right beside the search box and click on Twitter Ads. This will bring you to the Twitter Ads page which will ask you for set up information like your country and time zone if this is your first time and haven't set anything up with Twitter Ads yet.

After that you'll be able to create your first campaign. It all starts with determining what your objective is so first let's go over what options there are to choose from.

Twitter Ad Campaign Objectives

Tweet engagements

If you want more engagements like retweets, favorites, replies, to get more people talking about you and spreading your presence then this one is for you.

Your ads are displayed to users who are most likely to retweet, favorite, or reply your tweet and will appear in their timelines and search results.

Website clicks or conversions

If your goal is to get people to visit your website to make a sale, sign up, or just to see what you offer, this option is for you.

Twitter will display the ad to whoever they determine will be likely to click your post, purchase your product, or do another task on your website. These ads will appear on their timelines and search results. Make sure you have a great landing page. You can learn more about landing pages here . I haven't personally tried any of these but here are some Free Wordpress Plugins for landing pages.

App installs or app engagements

If you have a mobile app that you're promoting then this is probably the one you want.

These ads will only show up in mobile timelines to ensure that the user is capable of downloading your app.

Video views

If you have an awesome video that you want to be viewed, this is the way to go.

Currently as of this writing it's only being tested by Twitter so not every account will have access to this. In addition to having your tweet with video displayed, you'll have the option of adding a title and description as well as a call to action. It will be displayed in user timelines or search results.

Followers

If you want to grow your followers so each tweet reaches more people then this is for you.

This campaign will promote your Twitter profile to your target audience and encourage them to follow you. If you add a tweet to the campaign then your profile will appear in the user's timeline. If you don't add a tweet then your profile will appear in the "Who to follow" section on the user's homepage.

Leads on Twitter

If you have an offer and want to capture email so you can contact those interested in your offer to close the deal, this is what you want.

These campaigns use Lead Gen Cards (I'll talk more about this later) which collect contact information based on their Twitter user account so it's just a one-click process instead of having to fill out a form. They will be displayed in user timelines and search results.

1. Set Up Your Campaign

Once you chose your objective, the first step is to set up your campaign. I will go over the first objective of "Tweet Engagements" through this lesson as an example but the steps should be similar for other objectives.

Enter a name for your campaign and choose when you want it to start.

You have two options, start immediately or choose your own start and end dates.

2. Selecting an Audience

Once you entered basic information, the next step is selecting your audience. You can target specific locations or show your ads in all available locations.

You can also target by gender, language, devices or other additional audience features such as.

• keywords - target searches or users who tweet with the keywords
• followers - target users with similar interests to followers you add
• interests - target users interested in any category you enter
• tailored audiences - you can use your own data (emails, Twitter IDs, etc) to specifically target people
• TV targeting - target people who are interested in specific networks, genres, shows
• behaviors - target people based on their behaviors
• events - target people based on their interest in global or regional events

You can choose where your Promoted Tweets will appear.

While setting these options you'll see an Audience summary box that will summarize your selected options as well as display what your potential audience size would be. You can play around with your options to adjust your potential audience size.

3. Set Your Budget

The third step is to set your budget. This is really easy and there are two options here.

Set a daily maximum (required) - set a daily budget based on your goals and Twitter will automatically stop showing your ads once this amount is reached. Keep in mind that daily budgets reset each day at midnight. You won't be charged more than this amount each day.

Set a total budget (optional) - you can set a total maximum spend for your campaign and once reached, the campaign will stop. You won't be charged more than this amount during the life of the campaign.

There's also an advanced option that allows you to choose your pricing. The options for this is "Automatic bid", in which case your bid will be optimized for best results and lowest price by Twitter, or "Maximum bid" which allows you to enter a maximum per action (whether it be per engagement, per follow, etc depending on your objective).

Within the advanced options there is a Pacing Option which allows you to either spread your ads as evenly as possible throughout the day (Standard) or show them as often as possible (Accelerated). Keep in mind that if you do choose Accelerated then your daily budget may be maxed out pretty quickly in which case your campaigns will stop showing so you may want to increase your daily budget.

4. Choose Your Creatives

The last step is to choose your creatives. Your accounts should already be selected and by default it will show "Promoted-only Tweets". You can compose a new tweet by typing in the text box or you can select one of your previous tweets. Note that you can have multiple tweets in your campaign and they will be rotated.

Most likely you don't have any yet so click on it and and choose "Organic Tweets". This will show you a listing of all your tweets at the bottom along with some stats on Impressions, Engagements, and Engagement rate.

Just check off the ones you want to promote and you'll see a preview on the right hand side. You can toggle the various views which just show you what they would look like on different devices: iOS, Android, Desktop.

After you filled everything in and entered or selected the tweet you want to promote, click on the blue "Launch" button on the top right. You may be asked to fill in some required fields if you've missed them.

5. Final Steps

After you "Launch", you'll be asked to enter payment method or select from an existing credit card on file. After that, you'll be asked for a phone number and selection of industry to help improve your advertising experience. That's it! Your campaign is set!

Follow Up

Now you've created your campaign. Now what? Click on "Continue to my campaigns" to see all of your campaigns and see how they are doing. If you're not on that page you can use the top navigation menu and click on the "Campaigns" link.

The Campaigns page will tell you everything you need to know about your campaigns and you can monitor the stats and progress of your campaigns.

At the bottom you'll see your campaign. From here you can see that it's currently "Running". You can click on the pause icon to temporarily pause your campaign if you want to. You can also click the "Edit" link to made modifications to your campaign or click "Copy" to make a copy of the campaign. Copy is a handy feature that will let you create similar campaigns for different tweets without having to enter the same details over and over again.

Click on the different categories on the left side to see different stats such as Tweets, Platforms, Locations, and Demographics.

After awhile you should see more stats come in and hopefully you're well on your way toward your objective. It's not a perfect science so you'll have to tweak some settings until you get the results you want.

Tips and Tricks

OK, so you know how to set up campaigns now. Are there any tips and tricks? There are some that I know of and here they are.

Define Your Goals

One of the most important things is to define your goal. Without this you have no idea whether your campaign was successful or not. Make sure it is measurable so you have something to compare against when your campaign is over.

Define Your Target

Knowing who you're targeting will help increase efficiency of your ads. When creating your campaign there's a "Selecting Your Audience" section. The more specific you are, the more targeted your ad would be giving you better results.

Don't Follow Twitter's Recommended Bid Price

Twitter will have a recommended bid price which is usually the max. Go for lower than that amount and you'll get just as good results for a much lower price. Of course how low you go determines your results so play around and find what's optimal depending on your objective.

Experiment With Multiple Tweets Per Campaign

I mentioned that you can have multiple tweets in your campaign. This allows you to test them to see which one actually performs better. Twitter will automatically promote whichever is performing best so play around with different variations such as different content, wording, and pictures.

Offer A Download Or A Deal

Make the most out of your campaign by providing something to the user. A download is one of the most effective call to actions. Provide a free app, a song, e-book, a document, etc. Don't have any downloads to offer? Offer them a chance to win something. Everyone likes free stuff. Or you can even provide them with a link to your site that displays a discount code.

Keep it Short and Simple

The most effective ads are less than 100 characters and are short and straight to the point. People don't have time or the patience to read a bunch of words especially when there's a bunch of other tweets to compete with.

Be Visual

You have to catch their attention and what better way to make yours stand out by using a video or vibrant and interesting image. This also increases the chance of them liking or retweeting.

Use Hashtags

Popular hashtags that are trending can be an effective way to increase visibility. Make sure the hashtag is relevant to your ad.

Review

So today you learned:

• What are Twitter Ads
• Why use them
• How to use them
• Some tips and tricks

Are you using Twitter Ads? How are they working out for you? Any special techniques you are using? I'd love to know.

If you have any any questions or comments, please leave them below.

In the next lesson we'll learn about Twitter Analytics and how it can help us.