Since September we've been running a small budget to acquire Twitter followers on one of our accounts. These aren't paid followers, this is actual Twitter Advertising targeting and promoting the account to other users. Twitter advertising allows you to promote both an account or to promote tweets. We've not tested the latter, but the results of the account promotion were fairly clear and consistent.
This account grew about 30% faster utilizing Twitter's promotion than without. We've added 887 followers for $729.81 = a cost of 82.3 cents per follower. This is a branded account, not a personal one, and the description of the account is plain and clear – nothing snarky or fancy. Nothing dramatic.
Is it worth it? Perhaps. In this case, we're trying to grow this community and only want relevant accounts that would benefit and contribute. We're not looking for big numbers, we're truly trying to find and add the right members. The site we're growing doesn't drive enough revenue for a positive return on this investment at this point but we're confident it will in the future.
Have you promoted your account via Twitter? Are you getting similar results?
I would be interested to hear how targeted the parameters of this campaign were. I’ve had success with Facebook advertising but haven’t quite ventured into the world of Twitter advertising.
Just US and a few targeted keywords, Allison – the rest of the campaign was just setting a daily budget and running with it.