Promoting your internet business on the various social media networks is regarded as a major component of any search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy today.

Some of the social networks, such as Facebook, also offer excellent opportunities for paid advertising, and it appears that Twitter is about to leap headlong into that market also.

Watch For Promoted Tweets Coming Soon

Advertisers’ messages on Twitter are known as Promoted Tweets, and users should start seeing them in their timelines any day now, if they haven’t already.

This is part of a major push by Twitter to sell advertising space to small-sized and medium-sized businesses in the form of either Promoted Tweets or Promoted Accounts, which is Twitter’s pay-per-follower advertising system.

Choose The Right Type Of Advertising

The question then is, Which type of advertising is right for your business? That all depends on the amount of money involved and also what the goals of your business are.

If the aim is to promote a single product or a single piece of content, your best bet may be to use a Promoted Tweet, but that depends on how popular what you’re offering is with the Twitter users and how relevant it is, not to mention the quality of the copy in the tweet.

If you’re looking to gain more followers, then the Promoted Account may be right for your business, but the expense can only really be justified if you intend to maintain your business’s presence on Twitter over the long haul.

The optimum option may actually be a combination of the two, particularly if most of your user base comes courtesy of Twitter.

Is Advertising On Twitter A Good Bet?

While it’s estimated there are over 200 million accounts on Twitter, only about 20 million are “active”, i.e. access their accounts at least once per month. So, this begs the question, “How effective can advertising on Twitter be?”.

That remains to be seen, but Twitter is determined to become a major player in the advertising stakes and is putting plenty of its not insubstantial weight behind a push to match, and, eventually, overtake Google and Facebook when it comes to revenue from online advertising.

Its sales force is playing a leading role in the push, but even more important is its upcoming platform for self-service ad buying, similar to Google’s AdWords, making ad buying much more accessible and affordable on Twitter.

More and more internet business owners are advertising on social media platforms to great effect, and adding Twitter to your advertising portfolio may be a great move, provided your budget can handle the expense.

For more information and help advertising on Twitter, check with a UK internet marketing consultant, who will help you determine the best strategy for your business going forward.