Twitter: Brands Can Now Target Promoted Tweets

Twitter continues to expand the effectiveness of “promoted tweets” (also known as ads), and today they are announcing a pretty significant new feature for advertisers.

Brands can now target Twitter users by location with their promoted tweets. For instance, if a brand wants to promote a tweet concerning a promotion that’s only taking place in Los Angeles – they can promote the tweet to their users in the L.A. area, or California or however specific of a location they wish.

From the Twitter Advertising blog:

Today we’re introducing targeted Tweets, an enhancement that enables brands to reach specific audiences on Twitter without first sending a Tweet to all followers. Now global brands that have different launch dates for several countries can send tailored messages at different times, customized for the users in each country. Mobile app providers who only want to reach customers on one device can do so without also sending the message to desktop users.

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Marketers Value Social Media for Both Branding and Customer Acquisition

As marketers include social media as part of their overall strategy, 97% agree that it provides benefits and value to their business.

In a survey of more than 700 marketers worldwide, 88% of respondents told Wildfire Interactive, a social media marketing software company, that social media helps grow brand awareness. Social media also benefited marketers by allowing them to engage in dialogue (85%) and increase sales and partnerships (58%). An additional 41% of marketers said it helped reduce costs.

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Goodbye Facebook Places

Less than a year after Facebook deployed “Places” to compete with Foursquare and Gowalla, Facebook is pulling the plug on Places over the next few weeks.

Despite its 750 million members, Facebook could not leverage its mass to make “places” work

Facebook Places never really got much traction compared to other self standing geolocalization platforms like Foursquare, Yelp, Gowalla and other niche platforms.  Places though is not going the way of the dinosaurs, Facebook opted to integrate the localization feature directly in the post, on the wall.

The new feature will allow any user to tag locations in their posts.  They won’t need a smart phone or be near the place for that matter.  They will be able to use the feature from a computer, tablet or any other device giving them access to the internet using the “Places” icon at the bottom of the post

What does that mean for users.  As Facebook changed its aim from Foursquare to Groupon with the deployment of the Facebook “Deals”, we can expect a closer integration of “Deals” with the posts and more online offers.  Hopefully these offers will not clog the wall

Good news though, after the uproar on Facebook privacy settings and the bad habit Facebook had to make new features “opt-out”, Facebook seems to have listened to users and the location feature will be “opt-in”

Who knows, they may even start a new trend that will lead more companies to adopt the “opt-in” model rather that the “opt-out” model.

Social media step by step

Over the past couple of years, I have delivered quite a few social media workshops and received a lot of very good feedback and follow up requests.

To answer some of the questions, I posted a few of my presentations slides on Slideshare. the slides, though,informative, lack the detailed explanations I give during the workshops.I needed another way to get the information out and my new blog gives me the tool I need to do just that.

I am unveiling next week a series of features that will take users from 101 to advanced, step by step.

  • LinkedIn Monday will take users step by step from I juts opened a LinkedIn account… now what do I do?
  • Facebook Tuesday will guide users who just opened an account or are considering it, step by step through the process and coach them through the “Do’s and Don’t  of Facebook
  • Facebook Business Wednesday will help business users make the most out of their page
  • Social Media Thursday will deal with other platforms such as geolocation, social bookmarking, blogging, You Tube, strategy…

I look forward to your feedback and interactions.