Promoted Tweets - CDPR108 - week 2

Is there any value to Promoted Tweets?

I have seen promoted tweets on my twitter feed before, however I don't think I have ever clicked on any of the links in these tweets. I know this assignment requires us to do some research on the value of these, including the cost and the reach of promoted tweets and promoted trends, however prior to doing this research I want to say that I don't think they are valuable! I am interested to see if my thoughts on this change with some more research.

Researching.... researching..... researching... researching....

I can safely say that I didn't realize the amount of targeting that you could accomplish through promoted tweets and trend. Promoted tweets can reach users in a search - when they are searching things on twitter, these promoted tweets are targeted to search terms and will appear at the top of the results page. Promoted tweets can reach users/followers by posting near or at the top of their timelines when they login or refresh their homepage. This can target your followers or users who are like your followers. Even more than this, your promoted tweets can be specific to a platform - mobile/desktop.

Promoted trends can be used to "kick-start" conversations on Twitter. business.twitter.com explains: "Successful Promoted Trends give users something new and exciting to discover, participate in, and share." A promoted trend would appear at the top of the Trending list on the side panel of your Twitter homepage. 

As I continued my research, I discovered that a promoted tweet costs $120,000 PER DAY!!! This is up from $30,000/day last year. While the initial figure is staggering, it is important to keep in mind how Twitter works and the number of people that are on Twitter. In one article I read, someone was quoted as saying they paid $4.00 for a customer, who they will now be able to keep marketing to. When you think about it that way, it doesn't seem like so much money. That brings up the concepts of the cost-per-engagement and cost-per-follow. Instead of paying a flat fee for the service, you "pay your bid price when a use clicks on, retweets, replies to or favourites your Promoted Tweet" (http://www.quora.com/How-much-is-a-Promoted-Tweet). Promoted Accounts are offered on a Cost-per-Follow basis, much in the same fashion - you bid a certain amount of money (ex. $4) to have your account promoted at the top of an interest-target Twitter user's "Who to Follow" section (http://www.quora.com/How-much-is-a-Promoted-Tweet). This goes back to the quote I read about paying $4.00 for a customer. You now have a follower on your Twitter account, to whom you can carry on a conversation, explain your business, and market to - and more than once!

When it is laid out this way, as a business owner, I would consider this to be a valuable PR solution. However, your business must have this kind of a budget for your public relations. I currently work for The Figure Skating Boutique, and we are a mid-sized business. We do not have this kind of money to spend on promoted trents or promoted tweets, and to be honest, I'm not sure that this would be valuable for us. The figure skating world is small enough that we are able to reach many of our customers via word of mouth. In turn, we have been able to generate a Twitter following of 200 in just a few months. Most of this is because of the well-known skaters that we know and that we follow on Twitter. Some of these skaters follow us, and  then their followers see that, and they then follow us as well. 

I think for large companies the idea of the promoted tweet or promoted trend is valuable. For a company like Rogers to only pay $4.00 for a customer is incredible! But for small business, or even mid-sized businesses, this idea is just not valuable. The PR budget can be better spent!