If you haven’t heard, Twitter announced on Monday 4/12 that they will be rolling out their first paid advertising platform to begin monetizing their mammoth micromedia platform. The service is being called “Promoted Tweets”, and will initially be launched as promotional tweets that show up on Twitter.com search results. It’s the first step in a multi-stage roll-out, so there is definitely more to come, including the possibility of “Promoted Tweets” becoming a free tweet, as described by the NYTimes.com.

This is an exciting development to say the least. But don’t think that “Promoted Tweets” or whatever it evolves into will be the next Google AdWords. In fact, according to Augie Ray of Forrester, there are many risks associated with inapproriate use of paid Twitter ads, including public backlash against perceived “bully pulpit” tactics by brands.

Augie summarizes what this all means for the commercial use of Twitter by astutely noting that “this may be paid media, but it is a few drops of paid media in a sea of earned media.”

The campaign, sponsored by L.A. County Department of Public Health, was almost a year in the making, and forced our agency to rethink everything we thought we knew about advertising and cause marketing.

I just published an article for MediaPost’s EngageTeens column on the approach that led to the creation of We’re Fed Up… you can read it here.

Jose Villa

Basically, the folks at Buy.com took the scavenger hunt concept and took it to social media, including Facebook and Twitter as points of entry into the promotion.

To take part, you are asked to follow Buy.com’s Twitter feed where they will intermittently post questions. The answers to these questions can be found on different pages on the Internet. Once a participant identifies the answer to the question, they must post their answer on Buy.com’s Facebook wall.

Very clever use of social media. Not only is this a cost-effective way to launch a promotion (that is very organic to online retail), but Buy.com is building it’s social media communities. As of the posting of this blog, they had 11,409 followers on their Twitter account and 5,432 fans on their Facebook group.

Buy.com definitely “gets” social media.

Jose Villa