Atlanta, GA. – The buzz has been around Twitter Advertising for small business and many businesses have expressed interest in joining however the program appears to remains elusive except for the most elite of small business with no clear direction and a lot of mystery regarding the process.
Our editors tried their hand at it to see what would happen. First we attempted to join Twitter Advertising as a “Big Business” with the required $30,000 minimum investment. The process went through without a hitch with the sales team sending us an agreement to sign and full disclosure. Our team then decided before signing the agreement we would simply request information on Twitter Advertising for small business. Sudden silence.
We encouraged other businesses to try their hands at Twitter Small business making sure they were American Express Merchants and/or business card members, again no response after the initial Direct Messages from the American Express Open Small Business Twitter Account.
We then decided to contact our “Big Business” sales team and inform them we were interested in the small business offering, after all we qualify because the sales team literally contacted us daily to sign the $30,000 contract, so becoming a small business advertiser should be no problem, right?- Wrong.
We were then told that the Twitter for Small Business is being rolled out on an invitation only limited basis with no other information available. It started to seem that they were no longer interested since the $30,000 was not forthcoming.
Conclusion: It is difficult to come to a firm conclusion other than to say that the Small Business Advertising for Twitter does not seem to be a completed program and that a lot of the discussion is hidden and reserved for just a few businesses that meet a criteria that Twitter does not seem willing to disclose. We did notice that Twitter is more than willing to sell their $30,000 package but is not willing to sell their other programs to us or our test cases. Perhaps in a few more months they will be more forthcoming with their program, but by that time the buzz will probably wear off. Twitter may have missed a huge opportunity by becoming over selective for something as basic as small business advertising.
In the meantime small businesses can advertise outside of Twitter on pamphlets and/or outside websites which has proven very effective as an alternative.