Twitter has recently made its timeline more content friendly for users and businesses. This means users now see content they are most likely to care about at the top of their timeline. This is excellent news for businesses who want to increase their Twitter presence organically.
But what if you wanted to give your content an extra push?
BuzzStream recently showed great success in using Twitter’s Follower Targeting to boost downloads of a piece of content by 24.6%.
Let’s look at who BuzzStream are and how they achieved this result.
What Is Buzzstream?
BuzzStream in an online tool to help marketers build relationships with influencers in order to get attention, drive word-of-mouth traffic, improve search performance and increase awareness.
With BuzzStream you can:
- Research influencers automatically. It discovers contact information, social profiles and site metrics for you.
- Keep track of all your conversations. It automatically saves your emails and tweets for you and lets you set reminders to follow them up.
In a nutshell it’s software that can be used for digital PR, building links and content promotion.
The Campaign
BuzzStream were looking to increase awareness of their new marketing guide ‘Linking Outside the Box’. The aim was to drive downloads and ultimately grow their base of potential customers.
As part of this campaign they decided to utilize Twitter’s ‘Promoted Tweets’ with @username targeting to help reach people with similar interests to nine digital marketing influencers. These influencers were a mixture of contributors to their guide, or those known for discussing topics covered within the guide itself.
This clever way of thinking allowed BuzzStream to reach an audience that was likely to be interested in their content and who are more receptive to downloading their free marketing guide.
What Is Username Targeting?
Username targeting, or ‘Follower Targeting’, helps you to connect with people who are more likely to be interested in your business.
When setting up your Twitter Ads campaign you can select ‘Add Followers’ under additional targeting criteria and then create custom audience segments by specifying certain usernames that are relevant to your business.
BuzzStream chose to focus on the usernames of individuals who are influential in their industry. But there are a range of other categories you can choose from such as competitors, complimentary brands, industry media and similar audiences to your own.
Twitter recommends you aim to target around 30 usernames per campaign so that you reach a large enough audience.
The campaign dashboard will give you an estimate of the potential reach.
It’s advisable to adjust your selection until the reach is at least 50,000 followers. This will ensure you are reaching enough people to achieve some success from your campaign.
To select the right usernames for your campaign use Twitter Search to help find them. Once you’ve added a few usernames into Twitter Ads you can click on ‘expand your reach’ to find more.
How Did They Do It?
BuzzStream’s Tweets were designed to help encourage downloads by immediately highlighting that the guide was ‘free’. The Tweet included a link to their landing page and a short benefit statement to let Twitter users know what they could expect to learn if they chose to download the content.
BuzzStream’s Promoted Tweet
The Tweet was carefully written to ensure it was engaging and encouraged conversion, while sticking to Twitter’s 190 character rule.
The words ‘Free Guide’ were carefully positioned at the beginning of the Tweet so it was the first thing users saw. This took advantage of people’s emotional need for free information and their desire to continuously improve their knowledge.
The Results
The campaign helped to significantly increase awareness of the guide through encouraging social shares – successfully driving content downloads.
BuzzStream saw the lowest cost per download from Twitter – compared to other paid marketing channels they used for this campaign.
Across the entire campaign Buzzstream generated more than 1,000 downloads of the guide. Exceeding their goal by more than 22%. Twitter provided the best results out all the marketing channels that were used, with 26.4% of content downloads being attributed to the social media tool.
Why Was Twitter So Successful For BuzzStream?
BuzzStream followed 3 clear steps to ensure their Twitter ad campaigns were a success.
1.They Offered Value To Their Audience
They didn’t just jump right in with a sale; they offered something to their readers for free. Through the value add, they were able to collect newly interested customer’s email addresses on a landing page for future promotions.
2. They Targeted The Right Usernames
To make sure they achieved a good result from the campaign BuzzStream targeted people with similar interests to the followers of nine specific influencer @usernames. Each one was tightly related to the content included in the guide.
3. They Made It Visual
Visuals stand out more in the Twitter newsfeed. Buzzstream knew this, which is why their promoted Tweets included an image preview of their guide. It helped generate interest quickly and visually.
How Can This Help You?
We have seen here the use of Twitter Ads can significantly increase downloads of a piece of content. For BuzzStream, 26.4% of their guides downloads were attributed to Twitter.
If you’re interested in getting more out of your Twitter ads, we’re here to help. Sign up for your free business consultation with one of our Twitter experts.
