Twitter is set to open its promoted tweets function to small and medium enterprises in Australia, having previously required a minimum spend of $5000 to access the function.
Speaking last week at BEfest, the Festival of Content Marketing and Branded Entertainment, Twitter Australia’s Cindy Burke said the social media platform would “soon” open to businesses with smaller budgets.
“It is happening soon,” Burke told Mumbrella. “We actually hired someone to launch that. I’m sure they will be announcing it with an official launch.”
Telsyte managing director Foad Fadaghi told SmartCompany this presents an opportunity for SMEs to test the water with Twitter.
“Much like when Facebook started providing advertising solutions there was a lot of interest,” he says.
“There is probably going to be interest from SMEs that have a proportion of their customers or potential customers on Twitter.”
Fadaghi says the delay in Twitter opening up promoted tweets to SMEs is probably a balancing act as Twitter tries not to impact the platform’s useability through excessive advertising.
“You would assume that’s probably why they have left it to now until they have learnt some lessons from major advertisers on what has worked and what hasn’t,” he says.
“Also, what is the right level of advertising a user can live with in their feeds.”
Fadaghi says the appeal of using promoted tweets for SMEs rather than just tweeting from their own accounts is the opportunity to build followers and audience.
“A lot of it might be about making their existing customers and potential customers follow them,” he says.
“While some businesses are great at acquiring followers others are probably a little bit slow. Advertising might provide a shortcut for a larger follower base.”
SmartCompany contacted Twitter for comment but did not receive a response prior to publication.
Broede Carmody is a former senior SmartCompany reporter. Before this, he was a co-editor of RMIT University’s student magazine Catalyst.
