My silver rule for Twitter campaigns

There’s a scene in The Karate Kid, Part II, where Mr. Miyagi translates the scrolls of the two rules of Miyagi-Ryu Karate.

Rule number one: "Karate for defense only."
Rule number two: "First learn rule number one."

Here is my previous rule: Do One Thing Well. Whilst I can’t get away with “learn rule number one" as my second rule, it is important to understand how to make Twitter campaigns simple before making them complicated.

Therefore, my silver rule for Twitter campaigns is...

(Maybe I should get scrolls made for the office…)

This is the thought process I go through with every Twitter campaign set-up, especially one that’s new for a client. After deciding what the one thing aiming to be accomplished from the campaign:

Twitter’s Ad platform does A/B testing on your Tweets within a campaign to find the one that is performing best according to your objectives. So, if you’re after new Followers and one particular Tweet is getting a higher rate than the others, that will be the one that Twitter will put the majority of the ad spend behind. Twitter will always aim to get you the most out of your money.

Twitter recommends three Tweets. I say five, the reasons will be made clear later.

Demographic targeting like gender and devices are self explanatory. I’ll cover Location/Language later as they’re a bit more complicated. If you only want your campaign to remain within one country, then this is simple.

There are six options (Keywords, Followers, Interests, Tailored Audiences, TV Targeting & Behaviours), but let’s focus on these three main options:

Make a giant list of your best keywords and phrases that your campaign is about. Some SEO experience here would be useful, as this is what Twitter will tell you about each keyword to put forward.

You want a balance between a wide enough amount of people without it being too broad. You also don’t want it too niche that your campaign won’t do anywhere. Also remember that you should phrase-match anything that’s two or more words long.

I like this one, because if you have a clear idea of who you want your campaign to reach, you probably would have a clear idea of who they would be following. Add as many handles as you like as long as they are directly relevant to your campaign. I recommend selecting a good range (10-25 usernames). Don’t just go for big names. Try to get some thought leaders in there (as long as they're relevant to what you're advertising) with varying amounts of followers.

Twitter has come up with some categories for your targeting based upon more than just keywords. For example, you can target “dogs” and reach out to all the identified dog lovers on Twitter.

So, create a campaign, copy your five tweets into it then set up the Keyword targeting. Save it, duplicate it, remove the Keyword targeting then add the Follower targeting. If you can find an Interest to target, duplicate it again and use that Interest. You’ll have something like this setup:

Campaign Targeting

Users: Tweet 1, Tweet 2, Tweet 3, Tweet 4, Tweet 5
Keywords: Tweet 1, Tweet 2, Tweet 3, Tweet 4, Tweet 5
Interests: Tweet 1, Tweet 2, Tweet 3, Tweet 4, Tweet 5

3 campaigns x 5 tweets - it seems like quite a lot but trust me, it gives you plenty to learn from and optimise.

Tip: Try to give each Campaign the same starting 'Budgets' and 'Bids' - to fairly judge each of their performances once the campaign is live.

When I said targeting locations/language is complicated, is because each territory should be targeted on its own. Whilst there is nothing stopping you from setting the countries in these three campaigns as UK, USA, Canada and Australia; it's best practice, if these countries were your key locations, for each one to be set up with three targeting criteria.

That would be 4 Location x 3 Campaigns x 5 Tweets. Be aware that means you’ll be checking over 60 different figures!

Why all this setting up? Because of this next step.

This is where it helps to have five Tweets per campaign. After some time (I give them 24 hours), edit the campaigns and deselect the worse performing Tweets. You will either find that the same tweet is underperforming in all the different types of campaign or a couple are performing well in one campaign and not in the other.

Be brutal. If all of the tweets are underperforming, cull them. I have a few benchmarks that are Twitter standards, but if the numbers are dreadful, it is better to cut your losses and add new forms of the tweet. Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that and some tweets will be performing well. Having five Tweets makes this more likely, in my experience.

Pruning is probably a nicer metaphor to use. After all, you want your campaigns to grow to be best they can be. After pruning back your campaigns, you now have the best possible tweets with the best possible targeting. Now, you can start increasing budgets and raising bids to see what they can achieve knowing that they’ve been optimised.

Too many under-performing handles or keywords? Look at the top performing ones and try to add some more similar to them. Again, don’t hesitate when removing expensive options.

Starting with three campaigns with five tweets each, don’t be surprised at the possibility of two tweets remaining and a campaign completely empty. This is what you focus down to and concentrate your efforts on.