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by Jon Morrow
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If you’re using social media to grow your brand, you might have overlooked Twitter (rebranded as X) advertising.
It’s understandable. With so many platforms vying for your attention and budget, it’s easy to stick with what you know or what seems most popular.
You might think Twitter ads aren’t effective or necessary for your growth strategy. Perhaps you’ve had success with organic reach, or you’re focusing your efforts on other platforms.
But what if there’s an opportunity you’re missing?
What if Twitter/X ads could be the key to unlocking significant growth for your brand?
Twitter/X ads offer some unique advantages:
Whether you’re skeptical about Twitter/X ads or just unsure of where to start, this post is designed to give you everything you need to get started.
By the end of this post, you’ll have:
Unlike many of the other guides out there, I’ve spent thousands of dollars on the platform, so I’m speaking from experience here.
I recently decided to invest $2,000 in promoting my most popular tweets.
I carefully selected tweets that had already proven their worth through organic engagement, and then I used ads to dramatically increase their reach.
I also retargeted users who had engaged with these promoted tweets. The goal? Convert them into followers.
This strategy earned me around 2 million impressions. The follower numbers are also much higher than the 900 or so it reports.
So why did my ads work so well?
There is a flywheel effect. When you advertise a post that’s already getting organic traction, the ads result in more comments and shares, which results in even more traffic and followers.
In my case, I went from about 3,000 followers to 7,000 followers during the time I was running ads. It more than doubled my following.
And these weren’t just any followers. They were active Twitter/X users in the United States that were within my selected niche and who had engaged with my content. In other words, exactly the type of people you want following you.
Ever since running the ads, I’ve seen increased engagement on all of my posts, even ones that were not advertised. That’s because followers are continuing to engage with the content.
Let’s break this down into actionable insights:
In the following sections, we’ll dive deeper into the specifics of Twitter/X ad campaigns. By the end of this post, you’ll have a clear roadmap for leveraging Twitter/X ads to grow your following, boost engagement, and amplify your brand.
When you’re ready to start advertising on Twitter/X, you’ll face a choice between three campaign types: Promoted Tweets, Simple, and Advanced. Let’s break down each option to help you decide which is right for your needs.
Promoted tweets are the simplest type of ad campaign to run. You can boost a post with just a few clicks.
But I wouldn’t recommend it.
Yes, it’s simple, but you have no control over who you are targeting with your ad. There’s a good chance you will end up spending more money and get worse results than the other options covered below.
Twitter/X has recently introduced Simple campaigns. This option is designed for:
While Simple Campaigns are indeed easier to set up, you lose some powerful options. For example, tracking the value of sales based on your ads.
Is that a dealbreaker? It depends.
If you are running an e-commerce store, or you are promoting a book or other product on the front end, the simple setup probably isn’t going to work for you. On the other hand, if you are just boosting your posts to get followers (like I did), it’s totally fine.
Advanced campaigns offer more control and customization. They’re ideal for:
If you’re just boosting a few posts, you probably don’t need it. On the other hand, if you’re a major advertiser looking to make an ROI on your ads immediately, it’s probably a smart move. You’ll have far more control.
Twitter/X organizes its campaign objectives into three categories: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion. Let’s go through each category and the objectives within them.
Reach:
Video Views:
Pre-roll Views:
App Installs:
Website Traffic:
Engagements:
App Re-engagements:
Sales:
Keywords (BETA):
To choose correctly, you have to know what you want to accomplish.
In my case, I wanted to grow my followers, so I promoted an existing post using an engagement objective, and then I followed up to everyone who engaged with another ad inviting them to follow and used the reach objective. At present, there is no follower objective.
If I wanted to grow my email list, on the other hand, I would normally use a website traffic objective.
Another somewhat unconventional option is to use a sales objective and then set the opt-in as the “sale,” so the advertising AI optimizes for more opt-ins.
And if you want to make sales, use the sales objective. This is going to be especially useful if you have a cheap front-end product that you are advertising to a cold audience. If you are selling a more expensive product to a warm audience, on the other hand, it might be worth trying the website click objective.
In other words, there’s also some experimentation involved. You may want to run the same campaign with different objectives and see which one gets the best results.
You’ve chosen your campaign type and objective. Now it’s time to ensure your ads reach the right people. Twitter/X offers a range of targeting options to help you connect with your ideal audience.
Gender:
Age:
Language:
Location:
Custom Audiences:
In my opinion, this is the most important type of targeting you should be doing, assuming you are active on Twitter/X. You’ll be reaching out to people who have already engaged with you and deepening the relationship. Because it’s such a small audience, it’s also relatively cheap to do.
Follower Look-alikes:
Personally, I’ve found Follower Look-alikes to be ideal for cold ads. I can target other Twitter/X users I know my audience follows and siphon their audience.
Interests:
I would be careful with these. They could work, but you are trusting Twitter/X to have categorized people correctly, and that might not always be true. Some interests could be dramatically more on-topic than others. Test small.
Movies and TV Shows:
Conversation Topics:
I’ve never tried this one, but I could see it being extremely useful if your brand relates to a trending topic.
Retargeting Past Engagements:
Super useful. Retargeting these people is the easiest way to get followers.
Retargeting Followers:
Again, it’s a great idea when you start to get a few thousand followers. I would use this one to build your email list.
While each targeting option is powerful on its own, the real magic happens when you combine them. Here’s how you can layer different targeting options for more precise audience targeting:
Remember, while it’s tempting to get hyper-specific with your targeting, be careful not to narrow your audience too much. You want to find the sweet spot between reaching a relevant audience and maintaining enough reach for your ads to be effective.
You’ve set your campaign objective and targeted your audience. Now comes the crucial part:
Creating ads that capture attention and drive action. Let’s dive into the different ad formats available on Twitter/X and how to make them work for you.
Image ads are simple, yet powerful. They consist of a single image accompanied by text.
When to use:
Best practices:
Here’s one of mine:
Video ads can be highly engaging, allowing you to tell a story or demonstrate a product in action.
When to use:
Best practices:
Example: A tech company creates a 15-second video showcasing the key features of their new smartphone, with text overlays highlighting each feature.
Carousel ads allow you to showcase multiple images or videos in a single ad that users can swipe through.
When to use:
Best practices:
Example: An e-commerce clothing store creates a carousel ad featuring different outfits for a seasonal collection, with each card showing a different look.
You’ve learned the ins and outs of Twitter/X advertising. Now, let’s bring it all together with some real-world lessons.
Remember my $2,000 investment in promoting popular tweets? Here’s what I learned:
Twitter ads aren’t just about paid reach – they’re a springboard for organic growth.
Here’s my most popular ad:
How it works:
In my case, I plan to continue growing my personal brand this way. Yes, it costs money, but it saves a ton of time. Months or even years. To me, it’s worth it to spend $10,000 to have an engaged audience on Twitter/X.
Action step: Identify your top-performing organic tweets. Put a small budget behind promoting them. Watch what happens.
Don’t stop at the first interaction. Use retargeting to nurture potential customers.
How it works:
For example, thousands of people engaged with a post about my dating life. I could easily put together a lead magnet with dating tips and then promote it with ads, building an email list of people interested in dating. From there, I could launch a coaching program and retarget everyone on my email list.
Action step: Set up a retargeting campaign for users who’ve engaged with your content in the last 30 days. Get them to follow you or join your email list.
Twitter/X ads offer unique opportunities for content creators and personal brands. Here’s why:
Now, would I be running ads if I were running an e-commerce store or local business? Probably not.
From what I can see, the real opportunity is just using ads to supercharge the growth of your brand on Twitter/X, and then retargeting to deepen the relationship.
The bottom line? Advertising on Twitter/X is worth a try.
So give it a shot — you might be surprised with the results!
Jon Morrow
Jon Morrow is the founder and CEO of Smart Blogger. Through the years, he’s spent tens of thousands of dollars on Facebook, Google, and Twitter/X ads.