Social Media Publisher: a Verge of Arrival for New Profession…
Posted by: onlinepro in Social MarketingFor some odd reason Twitter doesn’t offer its own in-house advertising program (unlike Facebook or MySpace). Combine this fact with Twitter’s easy-to-use APi , and you’ll understand the demand for the whole slew of third party applications enhancing Twitter functionality.
In particular, we see more and more Twitter in-stream ad brokerage companies appearing out of thin air each and every month. Since Twitter advertising is potentially a very lucrative business, it’s no surprise that this type of start-up companies spring out everywhere. They serve as a middleman between twitterers and advertisers.
Despite all the negative comments from the social networking purists regarding the pollution of Twitter stream with commercial advertisement, in-stream twitter ads are here to stay. They bring considerable financial benefits to both publishers and advertisers. Advertisers can have access to the real-time conversations of laser-targeted segment of the market, and publishers could be rewarded for their twitting activity with nice income.
Which is especially important in this trying economy, when many people lost their jobs. For them payment for Twitter advertisement could serve as a means to stay afloat.
I am not talking here about twitterers who only publish personal status updates that are pretty much useless to a general public.
I’m talking about twitterers who spend time researching content relevant to their topic of interest, and who regularly post thoughtful and helpful tweets.
Numerous twitter publishers provide high-quality content in their tweets, and they should be rewarded for their work the same way as writers, journalists, and other content producers are rewarded for theirs.
Of course, if you publish too many ads in your Twitter stream, you risk losing a sizable part of your followers. So use moderation.
Here is a good news. All the in-stream ad programs that I discuss further in this post have a limit of 1 ad per day, so you won’t over-bear your twitter audience with commercial intent.
The common sense also dictates that you only publish ads that are related to the main topic of your Twitter stream. In other words, if you tweet about gadgets, display ads about newest gadgets. If your twitter account provides tips from pickup artist then publish ads from dating sites, etc. You got the idea.
And all ads should be definitely disclosed. You don’t want to trick your twitter followers into thinking they are clicking on a link to an interesting article while in fact they are redirected to a sales offer.
First of all, it’s unethical. Second, it’s a bad move strictly from a practical point of view. Such tactic will piss off your followers and you’ll lose them.
The newest Twitter privacy policy requires all the ads to be manually approved, which is a good thing - you will know for sure that you only publish targeted ads.
It’s better this way for everybody. Since you’re displaying targeted ads, they will seamlessly mix in a flow of your twitter stream, and might be much better accepted by your followers. This in turn will lead to a higher click-through rate of your ads, and happier advertisers. And this means more business for you. Full circle is complete.
It seems that new profession is developing before our very eyes – social media publisher. For now you can be paid only for publishing ads in Twitter stream and Facebook status updates (not all the programs will pay you for publishing in Facebook updates, but some will).
I am sure it won’t be long before other social networks follow this trend.
Until recently, the only way to make a living with social networks was either to become a social media marketer or social media consultant.
But with emergence of social media advertisement the door is now open for everybody. You can be passionate about music or movies or paintings or martial arts or anything else, and now you can make a living out of it!
Open accounts in Twitter and Facebook, provide really good content on your topic, grow your following, and with time you can have a decent living just doing what you love and sharing your thoughts about it.
If you want to monetize your twitter account, here is a list of a few ad-brokerage twitter programs to get you going:
Sponsored Tweets
Ad.ly
MyLikes
RevTwt
It doesn’t cost anything to signup, and each of these programs bring you a potential of earning healthy income in time (your ad rate depends on the number of your followers and some other parameters, so the bigger your twitter account the higher is your earning potential). When your twitter account will grow, the earning potential for your account will grow too.
All those programs have slightly different rules, some offer twitter pay-per-click, others offer twitter pay-per-view, one even offer paying for displaying a picture.
One thing is common. They all let you earn money for doing what you’re doing already – sharing your thoughts and good content with your social friends.
