One of the arguments that I hear from people when they talk about Sponsored Tweets is that you will lose followers if you participate. It’s total #bullshite from people who have no real experience with sponsored conversations. They make assumptions about how things work and how people will react without taking the time to try it for themselves and perfect the practice.
These are not “social media experts”. Experts have actual experience with the tools and concepts they speak about. These are social media donkeys, following the herd blindly through the echo-chamber that is the blogosphere.
People like my sponsored tweets
What? Yeah. People actually find value in the sponsored tweets I share. So much so that they retweet them and thank me for “for the find”. I am not going to say I haven’t lost a few followers here and there, to be honest I have no idea. What I do know is I continue to gain followers and I have never had anyone complain about one of my sponsored tweets. Not only that, I have personally found some awesome new services from SponsoredTweets.com that I now love and use including Alice.com.
You can screw up any form of advertising
Have you ever been to a website or blog that had blinking “punch the monkey” banner ads all over it? How about an adsense explosion? It happens. It doesn’t mean that display ads are bad, it just means they can be overused, misused or abused (like any form of advertising).
You have the choice
In Sponsored Tweets you have the ability to choose which advertisers you work with and how the message is shared (which is more than I can say for adsense). I am a proud Sponsored Tweets user and I am very selective on which advertisers I work with. It turns out so are the rest of you. Less than 50% of offers made to Tweeters in SponsoredTweets.com are accepted. It’s not a question of money, it’s a question of finding the right fit for you and your followers.
Ted’s tips to successful sponsored tweeting
- Sign up. You can’t get any offers if you aren’t in the system.
- Be selective. Only take opportunities that are a good fit.
- Cap frequency. Even if the opportunities are right you need to space them out.
- Listen for feedback. Your followers will tell you what types of ads they like.
Don’t let inexperienced fear mongers ruin a great financial opportunity for you. Let’s look at this objectively:
Worst Case
You sign up and never find an advertiser that is a fit. Nothing happens.
Best Case
You connect with lots of advertisers and make huge bank doing what you love.
Most Likely
You connect with a moderate amount of advertisers you like and earn some extra spending money.
As both a tweeter and an advertiser I find the service to be a fantastic one. I pick and choose my tweets to give my followers the best possible value. I also hope that the sponsored tweets that I advertise are ones that people will enjoy tweeting because I provide value.
Nice comments, I enjoy SponsoredTweets and it doesn’t hurt your followers. Some products I have been hired to promote I actually learned about myself and enjoyed just as you have said.
PS: your Sign Up link is broken.
I’m really liking the sponsored tweets I’m able to create myself – especially when I can use a picture of my 96 yr old ‘Pop’ to emphasize a point! People click, RT & comment 🙂
Here’s a post I wrote about writing a great Sponsored Tweet:
http://boatinginbeautifulbritishcolumbia.com/2009/10/28/writing-a-great-sponsored-tweet/
[…] Sponsored Tweets well obvioulsy Ted Murphy is in favour and in his new post I call #bullshite Ted says about Sponsored Tweets “People like my sponsored tweets What? Yeah. People actually […]
I’m not sure that “people find value in the sponsored tweets I share” is going to be a widely applicable argument. Given your profession, isn’t your sample group going to be a lot more marketing and advertising-savvy and conscience than the average group of followers?
I don’t dispute that it may be working for you. I’m just not sure that it follows that because your audience likes (or at least doesn’t mind) the sponsored tweets, other audiences will.
Funny if you think that I just unfollowed @briansolis because of sending #sponsoredtweets linking to this page.
As a reader I can say that not everybody wants sponsored information and as a publisher I have yet to see one report about ROI and user engagement that proves the effectiveness of these techniques for our clients.
@Omar Rodriguez:
If you unfollowed brian because he sent you to a post that you read then commented on I can’t help you.
In terms of demonstrating ROI I would point you to the graphic above. Two direct conversions from my one Tweet. In addition to social proof our platform also provides the framework necessary to track reach, traffic generated and actual conversions.
I suppose people love these things because it’s an uninvited invasion of their personal and attention space, but in essence they are no worse than sponsored blog posts or advertorial in magazines, and chances are, with the speed with which tweets are pushed out of view, you are unlikely to see them anyhow. I am not saying they are good or bad, just putting a little perspective.
@Learn2earnitnow: See The Crazy Results From A #Twitter Ad Campaign Of Only 2 Sponsored Tweets! http://t.co/ydhyEZw3 #socialmediamarketing #smm #homebusiness