I’ve had a tough week, early meetings, late finishes and worst of all some prime content didn’t do as well as I hoped. I’ve been working with a client last week before to create some really quality (and hopefully link worthy) content. We used our usual methods of content promotion but we just didn’t get to the right people at the right time.  It’s not that the content was bad, it was purely down to the reach we were getting with the clients brand. Have you ever had a similar story?

Twitter recently announced something quite interesting that could really affect the way we shout about the linkbait we create; the monetization of Twitter. Rather than simply shoving adds everywhere they have chosen to go down a different path and allow companies to pay to promote certain Tweets.

There are some interesting points that were mentioned in the post that I want to bring out:

• “Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets that businesses and organizations want to highlight to a wider group of users”. Rather than being a one way static message (for example “Check out our new range of hats”) Promoted Tweets are still Tweets so they will retain their two-way, “conversation” feel.
• “Promoted Tweets will also be timely”. Another nail in the coffin for generic messages, this will mean that you will need to update your tweets regularly to make sure your message isn’t lost.
• "We'll attempt to measure whether the Tweets resonate with users and stop showing Promoted Tweets that don't resonate”.  This is one of the most interesting points Twitter have brought up. They want the Promoted Tweets to be well received by the public for them to stay promoted.

What do they mean by requiring resonance?

“There is one big difference between a Promoted Tweet and a regular Tweet. Promoted Tweets must meet a higher bar—they must resonate with users. That means if users don't interact with a Promoted Tweet to allow us to know that the Promoted Tweet is resonating with them, such as replying to it, favoriting it, or Retweeting it, the Promoted Tweet will disappear.”

OK so how does this relate to what I was saying before? I believe Promoted Tweets will be an effective way off spreading word about linkbait and solve any potential reach problems. I have three reasons for this thinking:

Reach the Unreachable

Twitter described Promoted Tweets above as allowing brands to highlight their tweet to a wider group of users. Just like in my example above one problem people have had with promoting their linkbait is getting the influencers and popular users to follow and listen to you. What if you could make these key Twitter users, who usually only follow a select number of people, see your linkbait Tweet; you can now reach the unreachable. Using promoted Tweets you can technically be in touch with news editors, celebrities or even politicians who normally wouldn’t even notice you and your message.

Another potential use of this is when your brand is trying to break into another market. Take Best Buy, massive in the US with over 21k Twitter followers; for those who don’t know they will shortly be opening their first UK store in May. They’re a relatively unknown brand in the UK, with a weak 826 Twitter followers but by using promoted tweets they can get linkbait noticed by people in the UK who otherwise wouldn’t have even heard of Best Buy before.

Instant Resonance

Another advantage of promoting linkbait this way is that you will instantly have a strong resonance, meaning you won’t have to worry about your Promoted Tweet falling off and possibly even get better value for money when they introduce resonance as a cost factor. Linkbait by its very definition has to have resonance, it’s meant to be edgy, on trend, something that people will send to their friends and most importantly, link to. Rand had a Whiteboard Friday about using Twitter as a research tool, by creating high quality linkable content using his method you have “built-in” resonance, perfect for Promoted Tweets.

Good Cost of Links

This is a bit of an outrageous statement especially as not all the details of cost have come through but let me just walk you through my thinking. How much are you willing to pay for a link? Yes of course directly buying links is bad but like it or not link building has a time and resource cost associated with it. Think about the time and effort it takes to build up a relationship with a webmaster to get a link, that time costs money. By paying to promote your linkbait all you’re doing is frontloading the costs.

Ok so everything has a cost but how is this going to be cost effective. Twitter have dropped a few more hints as to how Promoted Tweets are going to work cost wise:

“Initially, advertisers will bid on keywords on a cost-per-thousand basis, but Twitter is developing a performance model that could be the basis for pricing based on a metric called "resonance””

So Twitter is going to be initially working to a cost per impression basis with it including resonance into the price later. With CPI it’s all about people noticing your message and getting them to click through to your link. As I’ve mentioned about good quality linkbait should elicit a strong response from users and have a strong click through rate making the most of your impressions and giving you a decent cost per link at the end of your campaign.

There are going to be other possibilities that I’m interesting in, especially around geo-local targeting, and targeting demographics but until we hear more I guess its back to promoting content the old way. Anyway hope that gives you all something to think about.

Caliban