A Guide For Sponsored Tweet Publishers

As you may or may not know, Sponsored Tweets and a few other twitter advertising services are now offering a Cost Per Click model.

That’s right you only pay when someone clicks your ad.

I’ve put together a little guide. Essentially, I’m going to show you what NOT to do to get the most clicks.

Alerting people to the fact that something is an ad is not only not going to help you get clicks, but it’s going to hurt your own reputation on twitter. Don’t label everything an ad!

Let me start off by stating the problem.

• Most of these services don’t allow you to write an exact ad for people to tweet out.
• In addition, you can’t force people (or even tell them) to be positive about your product!

What do I mean exactly? Let me show you.

Each of the following sponsored tweets literally use the word “ad” or “sponsor” in them.

Using the word “sponsored” is going to drastically lower the click through rate. Publishers are getting paid based on clicks, why bother labeling it sponsor if you make money when people click it?

This one starts off with “Ad:” again not going to work too well.

“#ad” is amongst the most common problematic tweets. Nobody is going to click, they are wasting their time.

“look at my sponsor” is another no-no, if you want a high CTR.

“Ad:” again.

Do you see where they are going wrong?

• They are alerting people to the fact that these are ads.

Go ahead and ask anyone, alerting people to the fact that something is in fact an Ad is going to have a certain percentage of people that never even give it a second of their time to consider.

The bottom line is, if you are mentioning a paid service then it is already an ad, you don’t need to label it! People know you are sending out an ad once they realize it’s a paid service. Just by stating that it is in fact an ad, does not help your reputation on twitter, your click through rate and certainly doesn’t help your wallet. In fact, I could make an argument that labeling everything as an ad or sponsor in fact HURTS your reputation more-so than not alerting people to that fact!

Is this a problem for me? Not really. I only pay when people click.

If this a problem for people sending out Sponsored Tweets? Yes, because they only get paid when people click so they are wasting their energy by labeling something an ad or a sponsor.

Instead of labeling everything an AD/Sponsor… Here are some better ideas.

1. Write the “ad” as if it’s something you’re just casually mentioning in conversation.
2. If you really want someone to click, know your audience and don’t try to make it sound like ad!
3. Tell your honest opinion about it.
4. Ask for their opinion about it, in your tweet!
5. Relate it to something else you did that was positive.
6. Find text on the advertisers landing page and use that! They probably already know what works best!

I’m going to stop the list there. What other ways can you guys think of that will actually get people to CLICK on twitter “ads”? Obviously, labeling them ads and sponsors is not going to help you get clicks or make any money as a publisher!