How to Use Twitter Tailored Audiences

By Robert Kilonzo
Published May 21, 2014

Do you use Twitter to market your product or service?

Do you want to focus your marketing to reach specific Twitter users with Twitter ads?

Twitter tailored audiences let you target people based on previous engagement with your website or content.

In this article you’ll discover how tailored audiences can put your Twitter ads in front of people who’ve already shown an interest in your business.

In order for your company to take full advantage of tailored audiences, you need an Ad Partner account and a Twitter Ads account.

Twitter offers two types of promoted ad options.

Ad partners collect data that identifies your audience, which you can use to market to your customers. Twitter ad partners include Adara, AdRoll, BlueKai, Chango, DataXu, Dstillery, Lotame, Quantcast, Conversant (formerly ValueClick) and [x+1].

When your ad partner is in place, set up your Twitter Ads account. The process is pretty straightforward and doesn’t take long.

Here’s what you need to know about the two options you have to promote your business via tailored audiences.

The first option lets you use promoted accounts to get more Twitter followers or build an active community of influencers and advocates.

Promoted accounts are part of Twitter’s Who to Follow widget and boost follower growth through suggestions made to your target audience.

Example of a promoted account from Merrill Lynch.

Here’s how to set up a tailored audiences ad for a promoted account.

In your Twitter Ads account, click on Create New Campaign, and then click on the New Promoted Account Campaign button.

Creating a new promoted account campaign in Twitter Ads.

Enter your campaign name and choose the campaign timeframe.

Promoted account campaign name.

Then, choose Tailored audiences as the primary method of targeting.

Choose Tailored Audiences as the primary method of targeting.

Select the audience list you want to target from your Twitter ad partner.

Import your first list audience from your Ad Partner account.

Next, select the geographic location you want to reach.

Choose all of the locations you want to reach.

Now you’re ready to create a tweet that tells users why they should follow your account.

Enter your promoted tweet text.

Finally, enter your campaign budget information, and then save the campaign.

Promoted account campaign.

Here are three ways businesses are using the Promoted Account feature.

1. Convert Existing Customers Into Twitter Followers

Seth McKeel created a promoted account campaign to suggest following his Twitter account to customers who recently interacted with his website.

Example of a promoted tweet encouraging users to follow.

2. Communicate With Devoted Brand Supporters

Twitter Small Biz uses promoted accounts to make tweets containing useful and valuable content visible to their most frequent visitors and individuals who’ve visited websites that are associated with your brand.

Example of how Twitter Small Biz is tweeting useful and valuable content.

3. Target a Specific Group of Customers

Like SERPs, you can use a promoted account campaign to deliver a customized message to prospects who abandoned their online shopping carts, customers who recently bought something from your online shop or any other customer subset in your database.

SERPS is targeting advanced SEO firms to use their software.

The second option lets you use promoted tweets to show relevant tweets to a specific target audience.

Promoted tweets are displayed at the top of relevant search results pages, within search results for promoted trends, in the Twitter feeds of users (if relevant), in Twitter’s desktop and mobile apps and in several third-party Twitter clients.

Example of a promoted tweet on Twitter.

Here’s how to set up a tailored audiences ad for promoted tweets.

In your Twitter Ads account, click on Create New Campaign, and then click on the New Promoted Tweets Campaign button.

Creating new promoted tweets campaign in Twitter Ads.

Just as with the promoted account campaign, you’ll need to enter your campaign name, choose your timeframe and select tailored audiences for the primary method of targeting. Then, choose the audience list you want to target from your Twitter ad partner and define the location you want to reach.

Next, select whether you want to manually or automatically add the tweets to promote. For the automatic option, Twitter will promote up to five of your most engaging tweets.

Enter your promoted tweet.

Again, enter your campaign budget information and save your campaign.

Promoted tweet campaign budget.

Here are three ways businesses are using the promoted tweet feature.

1. Follow Up on Customer Interests

With a promoted tweet, target people who clicked on a link from an earlier tweet and serve up related content and further your relationship with them.

Mass Relevance‘s ad partner identified me as being interested in content marketing so this promoted tweet was shown to me.

Mass Relevance takes advantage of the data collected by their ad partner to target users.

2. Regain Top-of-Mind Presence With Inactive Customers

Develop a promoted tweet campaign to target customers who’ve not visited your website for some time to remind them of your brand.

This price drop tweet from Nokia showed up in my stream months after I’d visited their site.

Nokia targets past website visitors with promoted tweets.

3. Connect With Potential Customers

Send a promoted tweet to target possible customers who’ve conducted searches for products related to your brand or visited sites similar to yours.

I’ve never visited the Eventable website, but they identified me as an in-market consumer. They targeted me with this tweet for consumers interested in in-market solutions.

Eventable targets people who’ve searched for in-market products.

Over to You

Tailored audiences help you examine each customer at an individual level and select the most appropriate kind of outreach that signifies maximum value for your business. They provide marketers with the capability to focus their marketing campaigns using external data obtained through your Twitter Ad Partner account and your website.

Use the examples in this article to give tailored audiences a try and see if they’re a perfect fit for your business.

What do you think? Will you use tailored audiences for your business? Have you tried it? What other online marketing avenues do you use that other businesses need to know to help them increase traffic? Let me know in the comments below.

Tweet!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,'script','twitter-wjs'); About the Author, Robert Kilonzo

Robert Kilonzo is a sales and marketing specialist for Omnistar Interactive, a web based software company that provides tools to help businesses sell more. Other posts by Robert Kilonzo »

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6 Tips to Boost Your Twitter Conversations

By Sofie De Beule
Published May 7, 2014

Are you struggling to build an engaging Twitter community?

Do you want to lead relevant conversations, but aren’t sure where to begin?

Standard auto-tweets aren’t going to cut it. Your top priority should be creating helpful, authentic interactions.

In this article I’ll tell you six ways you can start Twitter conversations and keep your followers’ attention.

When someone is looking for you or your brand on Twitter, the first thing they’ll do is search for you, and then they’ll check out your profile. If you want more followers, this is their first stop, so make it pop!

SpareFoot is an example of a Twitter profile done right. They’ve humanized their brand by showing employees having fun in their creative office space.

New followers love to see the real you in your Twitter profile.

Are your Twitter pictures and bio compelling enough to follow?

If you’re not sure, give it a quick test. Is your bio concise and clear about your brand’s purpose? Does it include keywords that flow naturally in the description? Do your background and profile picture convey the message you want associated with your brand?

You can include elements that encourage an emotional connection with any audience. What those elements are will depend on your niche.

Pro Tip: Clear out all of the clutter! Avoid using too many hashtags and don’t overdo it with links and text.

Ninety percent of information transferred through the brain is visual. If you want your messages to get attention, include photos and videos with your tweets as often as possible.

When Twitter added in-stream previews of images, it increased overall engagement. The more you invest in visual content, the more retweets, favorites and click-throughs you’ll see.

A study by Buffer found that tweets with images get 150% more interaction.

Increased visual content means big engagement.

In the example below, Sephora used calculated composition to include as much information as possible. A single picture shares a discount and product examples, as well as promotes a weekly feature.

Partner short tweets with carefully composed images.

Pro Tip: Remember that images use up about 26 of your 140 characters. Make adjustments to your tweets as necessary.

Clear messages demand simplicity.

Some businesses try to squeeze as much text as possible into their tweets. The result? Their message isn’t properly conveyed. If you waste words, you’ll probably waste followers too.

Twitter’s best practices guide cites a report by Buddy Media that found that the ideal tweet is 100 characters or fewer.

Ikea used 64 characters and a Vine video for maximum effect.

Pro Tip: Use medium-length tweets to get a 17% higher engagement rate.

Twitter only gives you 140 characters to capture your audience’s attention and convince them to jump into your conversation. Since your audience is already overloaded with social updates, the right words can make or break that connection.

To find those power words, Dan Zarella from HubSpot analyzed the top 10,000 most retweeted tweets. He found 20 words that have the most potential for capturing your audience’s attention and turning your tweets into actions.

Pro Tip: Want to get the most out of your tweets? Add please, free, check out, how to or 10 to your tweets—those are a few of the top words Dan found to be most effective.

When you first meet new people, what do you do? You ask questions. What’s your name? What do you do? How did you like the keynote?

If you want to get people talking, ask them about themselves. Twitter users love to share their opinions, so why not give them a chance to express their feelings?

To keep things focused, stick to questions related to your niche. If your company sells shoes, ask your followers about the last pair of shoes they bought.

“Who’s ready for Saturday night?” gets the conversation going while highlighting the product.

In the example above, Steve Madden stretched that advice a little bit. They posted a question about Saturday night, but paired it with a fabulous outfit featuring their shoes.

No matter how big or small your audience is, thank everyone who made the effort to answer your question. Show that there are real people behind your Twitter account and address everyone personally.

Pro Tip: Keep your questions conversational. Don’t talk to your followers like a robot, but like a friend.

Excellent content will improve your engagement, but that doesn’t mean you have to dedicate all of your time creating it from scratch.

Collect and share interesting content from other sites with your audience. Talk about it from your point of view, apply a consistent voice and show that you’re an expert in your field.

Wells Fargo tweets out a mix of original content and valuable links from other sites. They identify with their audience’s needs and find content that addresses those needs.

Curated content can be just as valuable as original content.

Pro Tip: Share a mix of curated links and information along with original tweets to make you the go-to brand for your niche.

Some Parting Thoughts

Twitter can be a struggle for any business, big or small. Getting back to basics can help you increase your follower count and overall interactions.

One of your first steps is creating an attention-worthy profile with compelling imagery. Anyone who stumbles across it should be able to get a sense of your company’s culture and products or services.

You may feel like you need to update your stream all of the time to keep up visibility, but if you don’t have a strong message, don’t tweet. Your followers won’t pay attention if your tweets lack authenticity and power.

Instead, focus on sharing intriguing visual content and stories that spark Twitter conversations around your brand or niche.

What do you think? Do you have advice about getting traction with Twitter conversations? What have your challenges been? Tell us in the comments.

Tweet!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,'script','twitter-wjs'); About the Author, Sofie De Beule

Sofie is Community Manager and Content Specialist at Engagor, a customer engagement platform. She helps brands to implement social media in other disciplines such as customer service and CRM. Other posts by Sofie De Beule »

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