This is a recap of notes taken live during the latest SMX Social Media conference in Vegas this week. The first session? Maximizing Your Impact with Twitter Ads.

Session Description

Twitter’s ad options are continuing to evolve, with mobile targeting and self-service ad opportunities as recent examples. In this session you’ll learn how the experts craft effective creative, select appropriate ad formats and targeting, and create landing pages that convert for Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts and Promoted Trends.

Moderator: Pamela Parker, Contributing Editor, Search Engine Land (@pamelaparker)

Q&A Moderator: Sherrin Ross Ingram, Founder and CEO, International Center for Strategic Planning (@sherriningram)

Session Notes:

Jon Driscoll, VP of Sales and Client Operations, Mass Relevance (@jtdriscoll)

• Explosive growth of real time content
• Twitter – over 465M accounts
• Opportunity: content integration
• Mass Relevance Platform – Discover, Filter, Display
  • Able to find tweets from certain accounts, lists, keywords, etc. and then create rules to filter as needed. From there can build engaging visualizations which can be embedded in different forms of content.
  • Patagonia example – created microsite to vote for the environment because “_____” and incorporated into FB, at the venues, etc.
  • Victoria’s Secret – tweet to vote where the pink truck would go next. Integrated instragram pictures.
  • American Idol – “flock to unlock” if hit certain amount of tweets special footage will be provided and you can download custom Twitter skins. Can co brand this.
  • Gisele Bundchen promoted tweet led to YouTube page and video. Should have sent to a microsite, showing conversation stream, tweet, etc.
  • Key Takeaways:
    • Just because they build it doesn’t mean they will come (Twitter ads help!)
    • Engage your audience with owned media (driving interactions on and visualizations of social content is a great way to accomplish this)
    • Maximizing Paid with Owned = More Earned (and this earned via social media generates much more buzz, awareness and amplification.

Janet Stauble, Social Media Community Manager, Bankrate, Inc. (@bankratejanet)

• Use promoted tweets to spread your message
• Look for ways to use Twitter ads to earn media outside of Twitter
  • Embedded tweets
  • PR pickup from tweeting journalists
  • Mentions and citations by bloggers on Twitter
  • Harness organic success for paid campaigns
    • In the timeline activity tool, toggle between your best tweets, good tweets and all tweets
    • Model your promoted tweets after your best tweets
    • 59% of Bankrate’s best tweets contained at least one number or date
    • Takeaway? Smart stats + clever copy = retweet bait
    • See at a glance how promoted tweets are resonating
      • Promoted tweet analytics are the ideal tool to monitor your bidding and the content of your campaign
      • Average engagement rate of 3 promoted tweet campaigns: 1.31%
      • Understand what engagement rates mean – .70% is the average engagement rate in the financial sector so this was awesome
      • Get more insights from third party analytics
        • Bankrate uses Raven Tools
        • Reached an additional ~150k users organically through retweets and replies
        • Benchmark your brand – compare an average day for your brand on Twitter to a day with your promoted tweet campaign
        • Measure success by benchmarking your industry – ask Twitter reps for insights you can’t get through the portal, compare your engagement rates to those of competitors in the field
        • React to feedback post-campaign – don’t let replies to your promoted posts fall on deaf ears, embrace the idea of crowdsourced content
        • Content of the people = content of the press – links and mentions came from ABC News, CBS MoneyWatch, etc.

Jennifer Wong, Marketing Manager, Optify (@JenerationY)

• Know Your Target Audience – on Twitter
  • Outline the following: target audience, pain point, solution, search queries, hashtags, call to action
  • Promoted Account – shown in the “who to follow” section; charged on a cost per follower basis
  • Set Up – target interests that align with your content, products, services, etc; “include users like my followers”; specify geo targeting parameters, target males or females if relevant, check projected reach
  • Killer Offer à Landing Page à Thank You Page à Thank You Email
  • Creating Offers:
    • Use search keywords
    • Placement of link
    • Use relevant hashtags
    • Ask a question
    • Present a solution
    • Address pain points
    • Include a picture or video
    • Promoted gated content
    • Landing page testing
    • 3 types of campaigns:
      • Promoted Tweets in Search
        • Ordinary tweets that show up in the top of search results
        • Use exact match for keyword targeting
        • Specify geo location, male/female if relevant
        • Choose which devices to display on
        • Select which tweets would like to promote
• Promoted Tweets in Timeline
  • Reach followers who might have missed your organic tweets and those with similar interests
  • Specify geo location, male/female if relevant
  • Choose which devices to display on
  • Select which tweets would like to promote
• Promoted Trends
  • Users see time, context and event sensitive trended promoted by advertisers
  • Brand play
  • $150k for a full day
  • Reporting:
    • Leads, ROI, Engagement
    • Tips for Managing Campaigns
      • Strategy, Goals and baseline metrics, content plan, frequency, set and manage budget, track everything but focus on the metrics that matter, TEST, social nurturing