Twitter Promoted Trends

Melanie Wahl - August 10, 2011

In a previous blog, we touched on Twitter’s first form of paid advertising: Twitter Promoted Tweets.  Twitter then came out with Promoted Trends in June of 2010.  There were a lot of trending searches for hashtags and keywords and many people saw “Toy Story 3” with a yellow-orange button next to it with the word “Promoted” inside.  Today many people have seen Disney-Pixar’s animated movie and so too, have those continuing to use Twitter, seen the progression from a button with the word “Promoted” to a small yellow-orange icon with an arrow pointing to the top right corner of the screen.

An example of a Promoted Trend hashtag is #BornElectric – the following is what may appear in the Trends section of your Sidebar as you are logged into Twitter:

It should be noted that advertisers can not simply pay to be on the trends list.  To be eligible to be a Promoted Trend, a topic must meet or exceed a minimum level of popularity on Twitter.  In other words, a topic must already be trending toward the Trending Topics list on its own.  Being accepted as a Promoted Trend simply gives the topic an extra push into the Trends section.

Just because some Promoted Trends are seen at the top of the Trends section does not guarantee that your topic will make it there.  Twitter experiments with placement much the way that the search engines do and does not guarantee placement amongst the displayed topics.

If you are interested in learning more about Promoted Tweets and other ways your business can leverage from Twitter, please contact us.