Twitter has made great efforts to make their service more useful for businesses. One of their more successful developments is called Promoted Tweets. Promoted Tweets are like normal Tweets but they have superpowers.
Unlike a regular Tweet that goes to a user's followers, Promoted Tweets are sent to the Twitter streams that match a targeted profile. They are mostly used by brands and companies to get more eyeballs on their products and services.
Build Awareness or Drive Traffic
They are ideal for creating awareness about your clinic, or driving a specific promotion or campaign. For example, you might direct traffic to unique content, promote holiday specials on certain clinic specialties, or giveaway merchandise. You can create awareness by focusing on brand elements and asking your followers to rewet your messages to their list.
Promoted Tweets appear in key parts of Twitter:
• Search results. When users look up topics at Twitter.com, Promoted Tweets are placed at the top of the results page.
• User feeds. Promoted Tweets are seen in the feeds of individual users.
• Twitter clients. In this case, "clients" refers to official Twitter software like TweetDeck and Twitter for iPhone. Promoted Tweets appear on these programs. They also are displayed on some third-party clients, like the well-known HootSuite.
• Promoted Trend searches. When a user selects a Promoted Trend, they will see Promoted Tweets in the search results.
Each promoted Tweet is labeled as such. You can purchase them based on location, interests, and even search results. What is unique about them is that you only pay when a Twitter user responds, retweets, or marks your tweet as a favorite.
How Effective are Promoted Tweets?
Fitness trainer Bob Harper was able to use Promoted Tweets to raise awareness about his book, "Jumpstart to Skinny." He targeted followers of well-known fitness celebrities and trainers.
The result? The campaign garnered an engagement rate of 5.5 percent with a 91 percent increase in follows, favorites, retweets, mentions and replies--not to mention hitting the top of the New York Times Best Seller list.
Cleveland Rocks
The Cleveland Clinic created the #onememory campaign to help raise awareness for Alzheimer's Disease. The promotion asked people if they could hang on to a single memory, what they would choose to remember?
The campaign gained headway when the hospital used Promoted Tweets. High profile personalities like Sheryl Crow retweeted it to their legions of followers. Most of the memories people mentioned had to do with weddings or births.
The hospital incorporated their Promoted Tweets into their overall social media strategy. In addition to Twitter, they also leveraged Facebook and YouTube.
Tweet Chats in the UK
Boehringer Ingelheim wanted to increase awareness of COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) during the European Respiratory Society Congress in 2013. Since they are in the medical and pharmaceutical space, they have to operate under tight UK governmental regulations on how they can promote products and services.
Before the conference, they ran some Promoted Tweets in Twitter search and in the timeline. The tweets pointed followers to upcoming Tweet chats used to prompt conversations about COPD among the public and health professionals.
They used the hashtag #COPDChat to create a consistent message and help people find the chats. The company targeted timeline keywords such as "asthma" and "lung disease." The Promoted Tweets appeared at the top of these respective timelines.
The end result was engagement of 1.9 percent, which compares favorably to the UK healthcare average of 1.01 percent. Boehringer generated Tweet chat impressions totaling more than 1.7 million, well over their initial target. In the process, they gained over 1200 new followers. Clever mixing of Tweet chats and Promoted Tweets was a potent mix for Boehringer.
Here are some "best practices" to consider when using Promoted Tweets for your practice:
• Accurate targeting. It will take testing and tweaking, but continually seek to hone in on specific target markets that yield the best results.
• Consistent hashtag. For each promotion and campaign, create a unique hashtag you use on every Tweet.
• Rich media. Did you know you can include photos and videos in your Tweets? Take advantage of these media to increase engagement and response.
Promoted Posts are another useful tool in your clinic marketing toolbox. We can help you get the most out of all your promotional activity with our targeted marketing services.