Twitter recently announced some improvements for their advertising platform,  including the ability to choose which tweet you promote and reporting of follower growth. Manually selecting a Promoted Tweet lets you can pick exactly which Tweets you want to go out, allowing for a much deeper integration of paid media in any brand’s Twitter strategy. According to Socialfresh.com  there are 3 reasons why this matters to market your brand:

1. Brands asked for more

Users now can now check existing engagement and demographic stats against their follower growth. The update doesn’t turn the Twitter backend into anything like SimplyMeasured, Radian6 or the like, but it’s not that bad. The important thing is people asked, and Twitter eventually delivered. Now, if only they could figure out that developer thing…

2. Keeping up with the Joneses

As we see Twitter move into the mainstream as a widely adopted channel for communication, they needed to figure out someway to continue to bring comparable value to their advertisers like the big blue elephant in the room (which many would argue has its own set of issues).

3. The Hashtag Explosion

If you haven’t noticed, hashtags are pretty popular.  From bringing people together in Twitter Chats to being used as slang or inside jokes, the hashtag is used by nearly every demographic group on the site.

For a better example, look no further than the X-Factor!

According to Twitter’s Blog:
The show’s new lineup of judges, including Britney Spears, Demi Lovato, Simon Cowell and L.A. Reid, have embarked on a race to see who is America’s favorite “The X Factor” judge based upon who can get their hashtag trending first.
Britney Spears – @BritneySpears – #ItsBritney
Demi Lovato – @ddlovato – #QueenD
Simon Cowell – @SimonCowell – #MrNiceGuy
L.A. Reid – @LA_Reid – #ImEpic

Brands large and small have been using the promoted tweets and promoted account products to help grow engagement, drive traffic to promoted URLs, and get more followers on Twitter.

Have you tried out Twitter advertising yet or are trying to implement it in your strategy?

*Blog was originally posted at http://blog.activengage.com/2012/10/twitter-brand-tools/