Yes, Twitter advertising using TweetBrand works!

Yesterday I tried out a marketing tool for Twitter I found via Media Culpa called TweetBrand.

Although I think Twitter advertising is something one should be extremely careful about for the same reasons Social Mallard lists, I think TweetBrand does this in a pretty clever way, not necessarily intrusive at all using the source parameter, – a Twitter feature which is always used for “application advertising” in tweets anyway.

Whether you like it or not, what the source parameter does, is that it displays the name of the application you are using to tweet. The default Twitter.com application uses “web” (not hyperlinked) but if you are using a third-party application (which you probably do), it displays the name of the application, e.g.  “TweetDeck“, “Seesmic” or “HootSuite“. The URL-shortener service Bit.ly is also using this feature if you tweet directly from the graphical user interface.

Here are some screenshots of me tweeting with Twitter.com (“from web”), HootSuite (“from HootSuite”) and Bit.ly (“from bit.ly”) just to examplify:

Tweet from Twitter.com

Tweet from HootSuite application

Tweet from bit.ly

As this text string is always included in a tweet, but not as a part of the important 140 characters, it´s an interesting extra communication channel with link possibility via Twitter which is exactly what TweetBrand has understood.

Although the application as such and the instructions for how to set this up clearly appears a bit “amateurish”, it works and I could set this up tweeting “from Lars Tong Strömberg” with a link (Twitter.com nofollow though) to this blog. Pretty neat!

Lars Tong Strömberg as source parameter with hyperlink

Any message and landing page could be used for this according to TweetBrand although I haven´t tested e.g. how long display text string could be accepted using this.

So, it “works” overall in my opinion from a practical point of view and as an acceptable form av advertising tweets. Any drawbacks then practically? There are two worth noting: First off, the application as such for tweeting is not up to decent standard. I.e. it cannot compare with any of the major twitter third-party applications listed above for anything except this particular feature. This leads me to con number two: As the application is not up to standard for anything else, I haven´t found a way to utilize this other than by preparing the tweet in some other app, only to copy/paste and send my tweets from TweetBrand.

Cumbersome…

Does it “work” from an advertising efficiency point of view? Well, I don´t have any data but apart from the cumbersome part of copy/pasting which I haven´t found a way around, it is a “free extra” for a tweeting advertiser as the main 140 characters are not affected. I think this is definitely value adding as it provides a way for the reader to quickly find more relevant information from the sender without being overly distracted in the main message.

Probably we will see this either as a free (or more probably) a “pro” feature of the established applications soon. At least I would make sure to include this possibility for a small extra “pro fee” immediately if I were them.

Edit: Lots of comments on TweetBrand now apparently. I am not using any affiliate links for it (and never will for a product, brand or application I review). Just for the record…

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