Twitter’s new Promoted Tweets subscription service may unintentionally widen the gap between influencers and casual users, helping to further create a new class of, “Professional Influencers”.
Automatic Amplification
In its latest attempt to come up with an advertising model that actually works, Twitter has come out with a new monthly subscription service that automatically promotes tweets throughout the month for $99/mo. While lacking an official name, the service aims to extend the visibility of tweets outside of a users “follower” base. This is the same basic concept behind Promoted Tweets, the difference being all your tweets, with the exception of Retweets, Quote Tweets, or replies, will be eligible for automatic promotion. This makes this new product basically a subscription service for Promoted Tweets.
Is a Promoted Tweets Subscription Service Worth $99/mo?
Most Mega Influencers on Twitter already have significant followings, and it doesn’t appear that they are bothering much with Promoted Tweets. Casual users are there to read news, follow celebs and stay in touch with friends. They aren’t dropping cash on Promotional Tweets either.
Where Promoted Tweets, and this new subscription service, really shines is with business and influencers. Those groups need to a sizable audience to drive traffic to their businesses. Especially the serious bloggers and YouTubers who are running ads on their content or who are participating in Influencer Marketing campaigns.
The $99/mo, or $1,188/yr, price tag is a lot for most bloggers and semi-pro influencers who are still trying to figure out how to fully monetize their audience. But for those who are already earning an income from their social media channels, $99/mo can be considered a marketing expenses. An investment that can pay for itself if you post often enough.
To get the full value out of a subscription service like this you’ve got to be tweeting a lot. The more you tweet, the more posts can get promoted, the more followers and traffic you’ll see. The most proficient Tweeters, excluding Donald Trump, make heavy use of automation tools.
Automate With Content Sharing Tools
Here are a few of the more popular content sharing automation tools.
Revive Old Posts – A classic WordPress plugin that automatically shares new and old posts from your blog to your Twitter account. The base version is free, with the premium version, $75/yr, unlocking some handy features.- Triberr – While rooted in the idea of mutual sharing, Triberr has the capability to automatically share content blog posts from your grouped up bloggers. Free to join groups and manually approve posts to share. $10/mo fee to automate sharing.
- Paper.li – Paper.li collects tweets and posts from your Twitter friends and favorite blogs to create a newspaper-like format which can be automatically shared daily on Twitter. As a Twitter user, I find zero value in others sharing Paper.li links. Others must though, because I still see Paper.li links after all these years. $9/mo fee to expand sharing from just Twitter to Facebook and LinkedIn.
Tweetfull – Enter a few keywords or hashtags, and Tweetful will selectively like, retweet and follow these users automatically. Keep in mind that Twitter’s $99 subscription doesn’t promote retweets. However, Tweetfull can still be a great way to boost your engagement. $15/mo with 14 day free trial.- Buffer, Hootsuite, Stacker and about a million others help you schedule posts to share to Twitter throughout the week. Most will let you put in an RSS feed to import blog posts into your sharing schedule automatically. Free plan with a $10/mo premium plan to use their RSS importer.
Swaayed, our own influencer platform, has the scheduling and curation capabilities of the ones mentioned above, but also let’s you automatically share posts from influencer campaigns. If the Promoted Tweets subscription can earn an influencer an incremental $100 from the additional traffic, Twitter’s new service can pay for itself. Free to use, ad rev share on campaign payouts.
The Rich Get Richer
Twitter’s new Promoted Tweets subscription service is great for semi-professional and professional bloggers/influencers looking to increase their reach. It does however make it harder for more recreational bloggers and influencers who aren’t yet earning enough online to afford the $99/mo price tag. This widens the influence gap between the professional and recreational influencers. We’ll see the rich in influence get richer, and the poor getting poorer.