If you’re an active Twitter user, you’ve probably seen posts labeled “Promoted” appear in your feed. These are Twitter’s version of advertisements. Twitter ads are available in over 200 countries and, with over 366 million active users, Twitter is one of the top platforms to invest in advertising.

There are a few unique benefits to Twitter advertising. The main benefit: you don’t have to be an established business or fit into specific parameters to create a Twitter ad, unlike with Facebook. This is a big boost for small brands just starting out who want to start creating an ad presence on a big social media platform.

What is a Twitter ad?

Twitter allows you to promote specific tweets, certain accounts, or even trends. This allows you to reach a wider audience with your Twitter advertisements, making them a fantastic way to grow your following. Also unique to the platform are Twitter Cards, which enhance the way you can share content from your website on Twitter. Instead of copying and pasting a URL link, you can use a Twitter Card to create a more visual and detailed tweet, with an image and some text describing the product or website you are highlighting. This creates a more appealing Twitter advertisement.

Getting started with Twitter ads

To start creating an ad on Twitter, you’ll need to sign up on the Twitter advertising page. You will need to login into your Twitter account—or create one if you haven’t already. Once logged in, you will select what country you reside in and your time zone.

You’ll be asked several easy questions about your ad campaign, such as the name of your campaign, its start date, your objective, and your target audience.

Choosing your objective

At this point, you will be asked what the objective of your ad is. For Twitter ads, this means selecting the type of engagement you’re looking for. Do you want Tweet engagements, like retweets, favorites, and replies? Or do you want website clicks? There are a variety of engagement options available.

Define your target audience

You will be asked who you are trying to reach through your ad campaign. On Twitter, you can select by location, keyword, language, gender, interests, behavior, device, and number of followers.

Select your budget

As with all social media advertising campaigns, you will need to decide what your budget is for the campaign. Twitter uses an auction system to charge for ads. The amount is set for an automatic or manually placed bid. This means you can create an advertisement to bid based on Twitter’s recommendation or you can choose the amount yourself. Depending on the type of campaign you create, Twitter will charge you based on the type of action taken by your audience. For example, if your campaign is designed to get website clicks, then each time a user clicks from a Twitter ad and is taken to your website, you get charged.

Advertising analytics

Once your campaign ends, you can see the analytics to see how well your ad did. This can be found on your Twitter advertising dashboard.

For other advertising 101, check out our blog.