Twitter offers free classes for would-be advertisers
Angela D’Amario, president of Firebee, a small PR firm in Atlanta, Georgia, says she constantly promotes clients on Facebook and LinkedIn, but she has yet to figure out Twitter.
“It just seemed like no one was getting good results,” she says. “Everything that was out about Twitter advertising was very confusing.”
D’Amario says she really wants to know how to target specific groups of consumers the same way she says is possible on Facebook and LinkedIn.
“So, you’re not having your message seen by all these people who could care less,” she says. “Where on Twitter – I really don’t get how it’s possible to do that – to say I want moms who are between the ages of 25-35, in Minnesota who like sports.”
Enter flight school, the multimedia training plan that includes what Twitter calls “Story Problems.”
“They’re designed to be like real life client situations,” says Kevin Lange, senior vice president, social media director at Starcom MediaVest Group. His agency helped Twitter develop the new training.
“The question might give you the objective of a hypothetical client, their advertising budget and then you have to pick from the choices which strategy on Twitter or which tweet is going to be most appropriate,” he says.
But, notes John Greening, a professor of brand management at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, figuring out what works on Twitter can be harder than it sounds.
“Everybody’s talking about it and they think they need it, but they don’t know why and they don’t know how,” he says.
Some agencies said they couldn’t even figure out how to sign up for the new training. (The signup link is here, just in case any of them are reading.)
One problem, says Greening, is simple lack of understanding of the new.
“With any of these new tools – people aren’t sure how to use them. What you find is that they put the old way of doing things against the new tool,” he says. “So, if it’s video they might treat it like a TV commercial. Well… that might not be the most effective way that Twitter works.”
Greening says just because consumers are using a platform doesn’t mean it’s valuable for advertisers.
“Just because it’s out there and popular,” he says, “doesn’t mean it’s an effective marketing tool.”
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
