Twitter Launches Keyword Targeting in Timelines

If you have advertised on Twitter in the past through Twitter’s timeline and have not received the results that you would like, you may want to try again. In the past, Twitter enabled you to choose from a list of topics and promote a Tweet within prospects timelines. Now, Twitter is allowing businesses to promote tweets in users’ timelines based on recently used keywords.

As a social media marketing company, we believe that this approach should be much more targeted and moves Twitter more towards a search platform that marketers are used to. Not only can you target prospects by keyword, but you can also target individuals by their gender and geographic location, as well as other variables.

This does not mean that more Tweets will be shown in timelines. It simply means that they will be keyword based, which enables marketers to better target prospective customers. Since it’s a new advertising opportunity, we recommend testing things out on a cost per lead basis to see how it performs for you versus other PPC channels including Google, Bing, and Facebook. You should also keep an eye on the cost per presentation and cost per sale as lagging indicators to ensure that your leads are converting well.

Early tests reported by Twitter show that users are more likely to click on and engage with keyword targeted tweets. The reason that Twitter has shifted to keyword targeting is to increase adverting revenue as it’s their main source of revenue.

Please leave a comment if you have any questions. We’d be happy to help.