Twitter Promote Mode: Should You Use It?

In November 2017, Twitter announced a new advertising feature called Twitter Promote Mode—beta tested by specific users in the summer months and now available for public beta. This new idea in advertising is a sort of “set it and forget it” subscription advertising. It is a way in which each of your tweets (up to 10 per day)  will be promoted to thousands, if not, hundreds of thousands of people (according to some sources) for a flat rate of $99 per month.

How Does Twitter Promote Mode Target Prospects?

At this point, targeting options are fairly limited. With the normal Twitter ads allowing extremely targeted tweets, the subscription model only allows for up to five interests or locations. For large brands with tens or hundreds of locations, and more interests to target, this just isn’t quite where it needs to be. But—as I will speak on a lot in this blog—for a small team it may be just enough.

Does It Work?

This is such a new feature that very little research has been done on it. One of the big players to try Twitter Promote Mode is HubSpot, who talked about it in one of their recent The Science of Social Media podcasts. In it, they said that they did see some results, but not what one might think. With one tweet, they reached 350,000 new people—a staggering number—but only got 50 more followers.

There might be a reason for that. On Digital Trends, they stated that Twitter says this feature is best for users and brands with less than 2,000 users, with an average of 30 new users per month gained.

Why A Subscription?

Twitter is aiming this new feature at small marketing teams and folks who just simply don’t have the time to set up an effective ad campaign. With Facebook leading heavily in the ads department, Twitter’s ad earnings have been slipping YOY. This model will give new or small marketing teams the ability to set it and forget it, while gaining generally targeted followers in the process.

Will We Be Recommending This To Our Clients?

As of now, all of our clients and our personal Twitter profiles have over 4,000 followers that we gained organically with absolutely no ad spend in 2017. For now, we are gaining well over 50 new followers on each Twitter profile a month and with the average follower growth in the Twitter Promote Mode model being 30, it doesn’t seem like this will be a great option just yet. But, we will not completely write off this service. Twitter is a mega brand with a lot at stake in terms of advertising profit. I am sure that they are raking through these stats and trying to find ways to make the platform more worth it. Until then, we will hang tight!

Through reading about this service across multiple blogs, I have become excited about the future of social advertising. Each social site watches each others’ moves carefully, so don’t be surprised if Facebook or Instagram roll out something similar for you to use!