That’s where Twitter tools come in. There are many tools available that can help you with managing your Twitter account, from scheduling tweets to analyzing your performance. But with so many options to choose from, it can be tough to know where to start.

In this article, we share a comprehensive list of Twitter tools that’ll empower you to manage, track, schedule and elevate your Twitter presence.

Benefits of using Twitter tools

Twitter tools can help you with the following:

1. Scheduling your Twitter (X) posts in advance

Plan and schedule your Twitter posts ahead of time to ensure a consistent posting schedule and reach your audience when they are most active. Twitter tools streamline the process and save time.

2. Tracking your Twitter analytics

Regularly review your Twitter analytics to gain insights into your audience, engagement rates and overall performance. A centralized Twitter tool can deliver the data to identify trends, optimize your Twitter content and measure the effectiveness of your strategy.

3. Growing your Twitter following

Use Twitter tools to implement strategies to attract new followers and grow your Twitter audience. This includes discovering relevant hashtags, engaging with followers and users, running contests or giveaways and partnering with influencers.

4. Managing your Twitter reputation

Monitor your Twitter presence and respond quickly to mentions, comments and messages with a tool that includes social listening and social monitoring capabilities. When you address any negative feedback or criticism constructively and quickly, you maintain a positive online reputation.

5. Engaging with your Twitter audience

Interact with your followers by responding to their tweets, reposting their content and starting conversations. Host Twitter chats, ask questions and encourage discussions to foster a sense of community and build stronger relationships with your audience. With a Twitter tool, you can manage and track all parts of a conversation in a centralized dashboard.

Now that you know the benefits, let’s take a look at some of the best Twitter tools available.

14 best Twitter marketing tools

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social’s Twitter management tools encompass nearly all the tasks you’d need to accomplish—management, scheduling, listening, monitoring, analyzing and more.

Easily manage multiple Twitter accounts in one place, whether you’re working with multiple brands or locations, or if you have Support accounts to maintain. Publish or schedule your content from one easy-to-use dashboard and measure its performance.

Sprout’s AI-powered analytics provides marketers with actionable insights within the dashboard based on business data. Analyze by AI Assist looks at your social data and gives you important insights so you can modify your social strategy where needed. For example, Sprout can identify the most frequently used hashtags and keywords in your audience’s conversation. It can also highlight significant shifts in brand sentiment and pinpoint spikes in mentions or engagements. Analyze by AI Assist automatically surfaces these insights, saving social media managers time and allowing them to quickly understand their Twitter performance.

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2. Planable

Planable is a social media collaboration and scheduling tool that allows teams to visually plan and schedule their Twitter content in a calendar view. The tool also facilitates team communication and streamlines the approval process with features like commenting and real-time feedback directly within the platform. Planable also offers analytics to help users understand the performance of their Twitter content.

3. Ritetag

RiteTag is a hashtag analysis tool that can help brands optimize their posts by suggesting relevant and trending hashtags that align with their brand. It analyzes hashtag performance in real time and provides instant feedback on hashtag engagement potential, which can help increase visibility and reach. Ritetag also offers features like hashtag comparisons and the ability to track hashtag performance over time. RiteTag is just one tool within RiteKit’s suite, which includes RiteForge for publishing content, Rite.ly for short-link CTAs and RiteBoost for enhancing posts in your current scheduling tool.

4. Audiense

Audiense is an audience intelligence and Twitter analytics platform. It provides in-depth insights into your audience’s demographics, interests and behaviors. It allows users to segment their audience, identify key influencers and understand their social media conversations. With Audiense you can tailor your Twitter content to specific audience segments and identify opportunities for engagement.

5. Tweepi

Tweepi is a Twitter management tool designed to help users grow and manage their Twitter following. It offers features like identifying relevant users to follow unfollowing inactive accounts and cleaning up your Twitter lists. Tweepi also provides analytics on your follower growth and engagement helping you to optimize your Twitter strategy.

6. Circleboom

Circleboom is a follower analysis tool that can help brands clean up and manage their Twitter accounts. With Circleboom, you can identify inactive accounts, spam accounts and fake followers to curate your following and improve your feed. It also offers tools to help manage your Twitter lists and provides analytics on your account activity. The tool also provides Twitter audience insights so brands can make sure they’re generating followers that match their target demographics.

7. Followerwonk

Followerwonk is a great tool for finding accounts to follow and analyzing your existing follower count. It allows users to analyze and compare Twitter accounts based on various factors like location, bio keywords and who they follow. This tool can help you find influencers in your niche, discover potential followers and understand your audience demographics and interests. Followerwonk also provides insights into your followers’ activity patterns and social authority.

8. Keyhole

Keyhole is a tool for gathering insights on your Twitter posts and overall account performance. Get an idea of how many tweets you’ve published in a given time period, the number of engagements they’ve received, likes, clicks, retweets and so much more. It provides real-time data and visualizations to help you understand the reach and impact of your Twitter campaigns and identify trending topics. Keyhole also allows you to track competitor activity and measure the performance of your social media strategies.

9. Trendsmap

Trendsmap is a tool for monitoring conversations on Twitter. Keep an eye on relevant trends so that you can incorporate them into your content or get an idea of when topics are being widely discussed. It provides a real-time visual representation of trending topics and hashtags on Twitter across different geographical locations. This tool allows you to see what’s trending in specific cities, countries or regions. It helps you understand local conversations and tailor your content to different audiences. Trendsmap can be useful for identifying emerging trends and engaging with relevant conversations in real-time. Get alerts based on keywords you’ve set about various topics of conversation so you can be a part of the discussion.

10. Mention

Mention is a tool for monitoring online conversations around your brand, competitors or any keywords across Twitter and other online platforms. It provides alerts in real-time, enabling you to quickly respond to comments and engage in relevant conversations. Mention also helps you analyze sentiment around your brand and identify potential influencers or brand advocates.

11. Daily 140

Daily 140, named for the original Twitter character limit, is a great tool that provides a daily email digest of the Twitter activity from accounts you select to follow. This includes their latest tweets, retweets, likes and the new accounts they follow. It’s a good way to keep up with the activity of specific accounts like industry influencers, competitors or thought leaders without always checking Twitter.

12. Twitonomy

Twitonomy is a great Twitter tracking tool because it offers a ton of information all at once. Gather in-depth analytics and insights into your Twitter activity and that of any other public Twitter account. You can analyze tweets, retweets, replies, mentions and hashtags to understand engagement patterns and identify influencers. Twitonomy also allows you to download data for your tweets, followers and lists for further analysis or archiving.

13. MeetEdgar

MeetEdgar is a social media scheduling tool that allows you to create and schedule a library of evergreen content for your Twitter account. It automatically varies the scheduling and re-shares your updates to maximize visibility and reach. MeetEdgar also includes features like A/B testing for tweets and category-based scheduling to help streamline your social media management.

14. Twitter

While often thought of as a social media platform, Twitter itself offers a variety of built-in tools that can help with social media management. Users can compose and schedule tweets in advance, ensuring a consistent flow of content. To share longer-form content and narratives, Twitter allows users to create threads linking multiple tweets together. Important or evergreen content can be highlighted by pinning a tweet to the top of a profile.

Beyond content creation, Twitter provides basic analytics to track tweet performance and audience engagement through impressions, reach and other metrics. While Twitter’s built-in tools may not be as comprehensive as some third-party platforms, they provide a solid foundation for managing your Twitter presence.

Find the best Twitter tools for your needs

Not every Twitter tool will work for your brand and your team’s needs. Do your research and read through our descriptions of each tool to find the best one for you. Or, take advantage of Sprout Social’s all-in-one Twitter management tool. Get started with our 30-day free trial and see if our solution will work for your brand.

The post 14 Twitter tools to boost your brand’s marketing in 2025 appeared first on Sprout Social.

Twitter’s built-in analytics provide basic metrics such as follower counts and impressions. Third-party analytics tools give you deeper data—the kind that reveals what’s really working, where you can optimize and, most importantly, how your Twitter strategy impacts your overall business goals.

In this article, we’ll explore why you need a Twitter analytics tool and list seven third-party X/Twitter analytics tools designed to help you track and improve performance.

Why do you need an X/Twitter analytics tool?

An X/Twitter analytics tool optimizes your social media strategy by providing detailed insights into content performance, audience behavior and competitive positioning. It enables you to understand what’s working and what’s not, adapt your messaging and stay ahead of competitors.

Here’s exactly how it helps.

Identify top-performing content

Knowing which posts in your Twitter marketing strategy resonate most with your audience helps refine your strategy and allows you to continually build on what works. With an X/Twitter analytics tool, you can easily pinpoint posts with high engagement metrics like reshares and build on those insights to replicate success.

Understand audience demographics

Insight into your audience’s age, location and interests helps you tailor your messaging. This deeper understanding of who’s engaging with your content lets you create campaigns that directly address their interests and boost conversion rates. This could be through more targeted ads or curated content that speaks to their needs.

Track brand sentiment

Customer sentiment analysis helps you gauge how people feel about your brand in real time. Tracking brand sentiment allows you to amplify positive feedback or address complaints swiftly, preventing them from escalating and maintaining your brand’s reputation.

Measure campaign performance

Analytics tools help you analyze your own strategies—whether it’s engagement rates, content themes or audience interaction patterns. These tools also give you a clear picture of social media ROI and the insights needed to optimize future campaigns.

Monitor competitors

Stay ahead of your top competitors by analyzing their strategies with X/Twitter analytics tools. Competitive monitoring tracks competitor X/Twitter post performance in terms of engagement rates, follower growth and hashtag use. And you understand your competitors’ overall share of voice, compared to your organization’s, on the topics that matter to your brand.

7 best X/Twitter analytics tools

We’ve evaluated several tools based on features, usability and the depth of insights they provide. Here are some of the best X/Twitter analytics tools.

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social delivers in-depth insights into account performance, audience engagement and content effectiveness across multiple X/Twitter profiles.

Analyze key metrics such as impressions, engagements and follower demographics to refine audience targeting and optimize your X/Twitter content strategy alongside other networks. Plus, identify your best-performing posts and conduct a competitive analysis to see how you stack up against industry leaders. These X/Twitter insights give you a detailed look at what your audience likes, how they engage and when they’re most active—so you can tweak your strategy for maximum punch.

Sprout’s Premium Analytics further enables you to select metrics that align with your X/Twitter goals. Create presentation-ready reports to showcase the impact of your strategies and share insights easily with key stakeholders through shareable links. You can also compare performance across multiple profiles with Sprout’s cross-channel capabilities to get a holistic view of your brand’s X/Twitter presence.

In addition to these X/Twitter-specific functions, you get access to a full suite of social media management tools—from publishing and analytics to engagement—to streamline your X/Twitter strategy.

Features:

• An easy-to-use dashboard that offers a unified overview of your platform, including demographics and profile insights
• Hashtag tracking to learn what hashtags your audience is already using to reach and grow your audience
• Summarize by AI that distills complex data into actionable insights, making it easier to understand your X/Twitter performance at a glance
• X/Twitter Listening capabilities to understand audience sentiment and identify advocates and influencers
• Device demographics to inform your content strategy based on how your audience accesses X/Twitter
• Customizable reports on audience growth during your selected reporting period
• Analyze by AI Assist to track metrics, hashtags, keywords, Smart Categories and emojis to uncover major insights
• Several report options to guide your X/Twitter strategy, including:
  • Post Performance Report to identify your best-performing content and analyze engagement metrics
  • X/Twitter Profiles Report for tracking changes in performance over time, including engagements, replies, likes, reposts and audience growth
  • Competitors Report to see how you compare to rivals
  • Paid Performance Report to track ROI from Twitter ads

2. Twitter Analytics

Twitter Analytics is a built-in analytics tool only available to Twitter Premium users.

It’s a useful tool for getting started and providing a snapshot of what’s working on your account—helping you identify quick wins.

To access, head to analytics.twitter.com, or from your regular Twitter feed, click More in the left sidebar, then click Analytics. Here, you get basic insights into your best-performing X/Twitter posts, how your last 28 days compared to the previous period and how much engagement your individual posts get.

Features:

• Monthly highlights that show your top X/Twitter post, mention, followers and other key updates
• Detailed breakdowns of engagement metrics, showing likes, profile clicks, reposts, replies and detail expands
• Average monthly engagement rates, number of replies and reposts

3. SocialPilot

SocialPilot offers social media scheduling, content curation, its own browser extension, help with ads as well as analytics.

Features:

• Automated reporting that generates and delivers daily, weekly or monthly reports
• Custom filters to perform tailored analysis, track performance over time, make historical comparisons and assess goal achievement
• Top Mentions Posts that highlight the number of times your brand gets mentioned
• Most Engaged Followers metric shows you who interacts with your posts, so you can reciprocate or give free products as a thank-you

4. Keyhole

Keyhole is a social media monitoring and analytics tool that helps you track your online presence. In fact, it differs from some of the other tools we’ve already covered because their entire focus is on social listening.

Monitor hashtags, keywords and trends across various platforms in real time to get insights into engagement and sentiment analysis. It also offers cross-platform publishing so you can schedule all your upcoming posts for all your channels (including X/Twitter) from one dashboard.

Features:

• Automated, comprehensive reports that eliminate human error in spreadsheets
• Campaign-specific reporting so you can see how individual social media promotions are performing
• Hashtag reporting to track user-generated content and relevant hashtags your brand is promoting
• Analysis of post types and times that will generate the highest levels of engagement, such as likes, clicks and shares

5. Meltwater

Meltwater provides tools for social media monitoring, media analysis and audience segmentation that help you understand market trends and customer sentiments.

Meltwater is ideal for global brands who want to track multilingual conversations and stay culturally relevant while addressing market-specific trends.

Features:

• Multi-brand search functionality for various research purposes
• Data sources include social media platforms as well as traditional media like radio and TV
• Assisted search feature as an alternative to manual boolean searches
• Data storage covering a 15-month period

6. Fedica & Followerwonk

Fedica and Followerwonk provide powerful tools for detailed social media analysis, especially on X/Twitter.

Fedica brings together publishing, analytics and engagement tools that help you improve your social media strategies across platforms. With the Follower Segmentation tool, you can group followers by different traits to target specific audience segments.

Now part of Fedica, Followerwonk adds features like bio search, user comparison and follower tracking, which helps with competitor analysis and audience insights. Together, these tools help you check the quality of your followers and track engagement.

Features:

• X/Twitter account analysis to find the accounts influencers follow—a way to pinpoint potential customers to interact with
• X/Twitter user comparison to find gaps or overlaps in how your followers line up with your competitors
• Follower growth analysis over a specified period to monitor how your account is expanding
• Audience interest and sentiment analysis to reveal trending topics, concerns or praise among your followers
• X/Twitter engagement dashboard to keep an eye on how your followers are receiving your X posts

7. Brand24

Brand24 helps you monitor and analyze brand mentions across various online platforms, including social media, blogs, news sites and forums.

It uses sentiment analysis to label mentions as positive, negative or neutral to help you understand public perception in real time. The platform’s Brand Reports pinpoint emerging trends and correlations, highlight key mentions and identify key events.

Features:

• Automated sentiment analysis gives you a quick view of public opinion about your brand, helping you react faster to changes in sentiment
• Mentions feed for easy tracking and response to all X/Twitter brand mentions
• Marketing analytics to monitor positive and negative mentions over time
• GPT-powered recommendations to identify growth opportunities and fine-tune your strategy

Evaluate your current X/Twitter marketing strategy and build from there

Ramp up your X/Twitter marketing with the best Twitter analytics tools for auditing your performance. An audit uncovers gaps, optimizes underperforming posts and aligns your content with audience expectations—ensuring your efforts on the platform actually pay off. Select the right platform for your brand and perform an X/Twitter audit so your content connects with your audience and drives meaningful engagement.

The post 7 X/Twitter analytics tools to amplify your strategy appeared first on Sprout Social.

Whether it’s a brand promotion, video, news update or even a meme, visual content rules the social media landscape. What has become so important is effectively conveying your brand on social media through images and video.

The visual face of your brand is oftentimes the first thing your audience sees and possibly the one thing they remember. It’s difficult to reuse the same image across all social networks unless you have a free social media image resizing tool like Landscape.

Sprout Social’s very own tool is free to use to resize, crop and scale social media image sizes. And along with our resizing tool, we’ve provided all the specific dimensions and a few quick tips to help you decide which image best fits each position.

Before we get into it, here are some additional resources:

• Easily reference this social media image sizes list in our always up-to-date Google Doc.
• Bookmark our social media video specs and ad guide!
• Download free social media images that are already optimized!
• Find more information about Sprout-supported files and sizes in our Help Center.

Easily manage multimedia content with Sprout

Sprout’s Asset Library simplifies publishing and asset management by providing you with a centralized location to store images, videos and text.

Quickly create, organize, edit and publish assets directly from the Asset Library to deliver on-brand, visually engaging posts for any connected social network.

Start Your Free Trial

Social Media Image Sizes Per Network

These links will make it easier for you to navigate to the specific social media image sizes per network:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• TikTok
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• YouTube
• Google My Business

Facebook Image Sizes

With 2.96 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the world’s largest social network. For that reason alone, it’s important to have attractive and engaging images that are optimized for the platform.

Remember that different devices, whether it’s mobile or desktop, render differently. Make sure that you are choosing dimensions based on where you want the majority of viewers to see your image.

Learn more about Facebook image sizes

Get specs and tips for implementing the best visual content on Facebook with these guides:

• Always up-to-date list of Facebook ad sizes & specs
• The Picture-Perfect Facebook Cover Photo Size
• Facebook Event Photo Size & Dimensions Guide

Facebook Profile Picture

Say cheese: your profile picture represents you or your brand on Facebook. This is the round photo that appears on your timeline layered over your cover photo. Your profile picture will also appear when you post to other walls, comment on posts or when your profile is searched.

Facebook profile picture image guidelines

• Recommended image size: 320×320 pixels
• Minimum file size: 180×60 pixels
• Displays:
  • 176×176 pixels (desktop)
  • 196×196 pixels (smartphones)
  • 36×36 pixels (most feature phones)
• Recommended file type: JPG, PNG
• Profile pictures are cropped to a circle

Facebook Business Page Profile Picture

Facebook changed its Profile image for Business Pages to appear to the left side of the screen. The new look helps Facebook Business Pages follow a similar appearance as personal accounts. However, the dimensions are the same, but the photo appears on the page slightly different.

Facebook Business Page profile image guidelines

• Recommended image size: 320×320 pixels
• Minimum file size: 180×60 pixels
• Displays:
  • 176×176 pixels (desktop)
  • 196×196 pixels (smartphones)
  • 36×36 pixels (most feature phones)
  • Recommended file type: JPG, PNG
• Profile pictures are cropped to a circle

Facebook Profile and Business Page Cover Photo

Your Facebook cover photo will only appear on your Facebook timeline, and it stretches across the entire screen, which gives you more freedom to choose something creative or supplement your profile picture. Where your profile picture might be a good choice for a picture of you or a brand logo, use this space to post something that speaks more toward you as an individual or as a brand.

Facebook profile and Business Page cover photo image guidelines

• Ratio: 16:9
• Minimum required size: 400×150 pixels
• Recommended image size: 851×315 pixels
• Mobile display size: 640×360 pixels
• Max file size: 100kb
• Recommended file type: JPG, PNG
• Notes:
  • The left side of your cover photo will be covered by your profile picture. On mobile, it could be 75% of your profile picture will overlap into the cover photo.
  • Images with a logo or text may be best as a PNG file
  • Business Page dimensions are exactly the same as personal accounts.

Facebook Shared Image

A shared image is one of the most common forms of sharing on Facebook. These images will always appear on your timeline, and ideally they will show up in most of your followers’ News Feeds — though with the Facebook algorithm determining which content will be served, it’s unlikely that everyone will see your post. The more people engage with your post, the more likely it is that the rest of your followers and their followers will see that activity.

Facebook shared image guidelines

• Recommended image size: 1080×1350 pixels
• Maximum file size: 8MB
• Recommended file type: JPG, PNG, GIF
• Appears in feed at a max width of 470 pixels (will scale to a max of 1:1)
• Appears on page at a max width of 504 pixels (will scale to a max of 1:1)

Sprout Guidelines:

• Same as above, except:
• Max number of images per post: 10 in Sprout

Facebook Shared Link

Another great tool in your Facebook belt is the ability to share a link. It’s very similar to posting a shared image, but it gives you even more fields to work with. You can choose to create a shared link with a small square image to the left and text on the right, or with a larger rectangular image on top with text underneath.

Facebook shared link image guidelines

• Recommended image size: 1080×1350 pixels
• Displays:
  • 479×246 pixels (desktop)
  • 320 pixel width (mobile)
• Minimum size: 200×200 pixels
• Maximum file size: 8MB
• Facebook will scale photos under the minimum dimensions. For better results, increase image resolution at the same scale as the minimum size.

Facebook Event Image

Facebook Events help capture the attention of users and cut through the noise on Facebook. Reminders are sent to your audience and having a good space with an even better image is important. Make sure you have the right dimensions down for a Facebook Event cover photo.

Facebook Event image guidelines

• Recommended image size: 1920×1005
• Facebook will scale down to minimum dimensions: 400×150 pixels
• Facebook recommends for best results, choose photos that are 400×150 pixels.

Facebook Fundraiser image

Facebook has added the ability to create a fundraiser for charitable organizations or personal causes. The cover photo for these fundraisers slightly varies from a typical Facebook cover photo, with a minimum size of 400×150. The best experience across many display types will come from a higher resolution image, though.

Looking for Facebook ad sizes?

Facebook ad formatting can be even more complex than organic posts, so for more guidelines, check out our complete guide to every Facebook ad size!

Find more information on the image sizes for Facebook, visit the Facebook Help Center.

Find more information about Sprout-supported files and sizes in our Help Center.

Twitter Image Sizes

With 436 million monthly active users, Twitter is one of the social media networks that your customers will most often use to discuss your brand.

X (fka Twitter) Profile Photo

Your X profile photo is the main image that represents you or your brand across the network. It’s going to be seen across the site in a number of places by a number of people so make sure it’s of the highest quality. Here’s the places your profile photo will be visible on the site.

• On your page: The largest display of your profile picture is on your homepage and can be viewed by your followers as well as individuals who stumble upon your page.
• In-stream: A smaller version of your profile picture appears in a follower’s X stream every time you Post or are Reposted.
• Who to follow: Your profile picture is also going to appear next to a link to your page in the “Who to follow” box. This is located directly to the right of your X stream on desktop. Choose a recognizable image here.

X (fka Twitter) profile photo image guidelines

• Recommended image size: 400×400 pixels
• Maximum file size: 5MB
• Image types include: JPG, GIF or PNG

X (fka Twitter) Header Photo

Your header photo is the image that spans the top of your X profile page. It’s quite a bit larger than your profile photo so make sure to save it at the highest resolution possible. Because you have more room to be creative with this picture and it will likely be the first thing your visitors see, make it something captivating.

X (fka Twitter) header image guidelines

• Recommended image size: 1500×500 pixels
• Maximum file size: 5MB
• Recommended file type: JPG, GIF or PNG

X (fka Twitter) In-Stream Photos and Shared Links

X users can attach photos to any of their Posts. Depending on whether you’re attaching one or many photos or sharing a link, the way photos crop and display in stream will vary slightly.

Fortunately, in 2021, X made waves with #TwitterCropIsGone, eliminating the sometimes-unfavorable automated cropping for vertical images that had often become the subject of memes and in-jokes among users of the platform. Extremely wide or tall images with unusual dimensions may still get cropped, but for most images in standard 4:3 or 16:9 dimensions, you won’t have to worry as much about centering subjects around automated cropping.

The following are some best practices to get an optimal result, and you can also preview the end result in Sprout’s Compose window before you publish.

Recommended sizes for images by types of Posts:

• Recommended image sizes:
  • Minimum: 600×335 pixels
  • Landscape: 1024×512 pixels (minimum) and 1600×900 pixels (recommended)
  • Square: 1080×1080 pixels
  • Portrait: 1080×1350 pixels
• Recommended aspect ratio: 16:9
• Maximum file size:
  • 5 MB for JPG, PNG
  • 15 MB for GIFs
• Maximum number of images per post: 4 images

Sprout Guidelines:

• Same as above

Find more information on in-stream photos at the X Help Center.

Find more information about Sprout-supported files and sizes in our Help Center.

Instagram Image Sizes

Instagram is one of the most popular photo-sharing social networks. It’s the best place to showcase your visual creativity, even down to making a compelling grid out of the way your photos’ thumbnails display in sequence.

Instagram Profile Picture

Instagram is based on visuals, which should be an indication of how important it is to follow these image size guidelines. Ensure your profile image is recognizable so users can find you even easier through search or explore.

Instagram profile picture image guidelines

• Recommended image size: 110×110 pixels
• Recommended aspect ratio: 1:1, 4:5

Instagram Photo Size (Feed & Ad)

Because Instagram is all about sharing visual content – both images and videos – that appear in your followers’ feeds, it’s important to use higher resolution photos. Whether you’re posting natively in the app, via desktop or through a social media management tool, these guidelines below will help you put your best foot forward.

Instagram photo size (feed & ad) image guidelines

• Recommended image size: 1080×1080 pixels or 1080×1350 pixels
• Recommended minimum width: 1080 pixels
  • Images with a width between 320 and 1080 pixels will be kept at the original resolution as long as it fits the recommended aspect ratio listed below
  • If images are a lower resolution, Instagram will enlarge to a width of 320 pixels
  • If images are a higher resolution, Instagram will shrink it to a width of 1080 pixels
• Recommended aspect ratio: 1.91:1 or 4:5
  • Images will be cropped to fit a supported ratio
• Maximum file size: 8MB
• Recommended file type: JPG and PNG
• Maximum number of images per post: 10 images

Sprout Guidelines:

• Same as above

Instagram Photo Thumbnails

When someone goes to your page, they’ll be presented with all of your content arranged in rows of thumbnails. These smaller renditions of your images and videos will expand when clicked and include a place for people to comment.

Instagram photo thumbnails image guidelines

• Thumbnails will appear at 161×161 pixels
• Recommended image width: 1080 pixel
• Feed aspect ratio: 1:1

Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories are a popular source of visuals on the app. There are both video and image options available to publish. And while this feature was originally meant to be ephemeral, it’s possible to upload your own content and build a strategy around Stories engagement.

Instagram Story image guidelines

• Recommended resolution: 1920×1080
• Minimum resolution: 150×150
• Aspect ratio: 9:16

Sprout Guidelines:

• Same as above, except:
• Aspect ratio: 4:5 to 1.91:1 for Story Images published through Sprout

For those looking for more info on Instagram ad sizes, including video specs, check out this guide!

TikTok Image Sizes

With 1 billion monthly active users, TikTok has grown considerably over the last few years. With nearly half its users under the age of 30, TikTok is becoming the social platform for younger target audiences.

TikTok Profile Image

All TikTok users have the option to upload a profile image to their accounts. This is the perfect opportunity for businesses to showcase their personalities through branding or to highlight a specific campaign.

TikTok profile image guidelines

• Minimum image size: 200×200 pixels
• Recommended file type: JPG, GIF or PNG

Looking for more TikTok specs? Our Always-Up-To-Date Video Specs guide can answer those questions.

LinkedIn Image Sizes

With 467 million registered users, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network. Where other social networks may be good drivers of traffic and customers, LinkedIn is a great place for you to source great employees and to connect with other industry leaders.

LinkedIn Personal Profile Image

LinkedIn started using a new layout for personal profiles and kept the box logo with company pages (more on that below). However, the personal profile dimensions for LinkedIn is very straightforward. This is the main image that represents you on your personal profile. So anytime someone takes a look at your profile for some quick info, this is the prominent image that represents you. It’s important to get the size right.

LinkedIn personal profile image guidelines

• Minimum image size: 268×268 pixels
• Recommended image size: 400×400 pixels
• Maximum file size: 3MB
• Recommended file type: JPG or PNG

LinkedIn Cover Image

LinkedIn’s background image is a newer feature for your personal profile. It’s a little bit trickier to find something that really fits that space well, but if you get it right, your profile will look great.

LinkedIn cover image guidelines

• Recommended image size: 1584×396 pixels
• Maximum file size: 8MB
• Recommended file type: JPG or PNG

LinkedIn Company Logo Image

One of the two brand logos that you should be uploading to LinkedIn is the standard company logo. This is the bigger of the two and is going to show up right next to your brand name on your LinkedIn homepage. This image also appears in the “Companies you may want to follow” section. The more enticing the photo, the more likely you’ll gain followers.

LinkedIn Company logo image guidelines

• Minimum image size: 268×268 pixels
• Recommended image size: 400×400 pixels
• Maximum file size: 3MB
• Recommended file type: JPG or PNG

LinkedIn Company Cover Image

Unlike the personal background image, the company or standard business background image covers the entire top of the page. The image appears much larger than the personal dimensions, giving businesses a bit more space.

LinkedIn Company cover image guidelines

• Recommended image size: 1128×191 pixels
• Maximum file size: 3MB
• Recommended file type: JPG or PNG

LinkedIn Shared Image or Link

This size works for LinkedIn posts that share a photo or a link with an image to a blog post or article to your company page’s feed.

LinkedIn shared image or link image guidelines

• Recommended image size for links: 1200×627 pixels, based on mobile scaling
• Recommended file type: JPG or PNG

Sprout Guidelines:

• Same as above, except:
• Maximum number of images per post: 9
• Maximum image size: 5MB
• Supported file types: JPG, PNG, GIF (250 frame limit)

LinkedIn Life Tab – Main Image & Company Photos

The Life tab on LinkedIn company pages lets you provide a more in-depth look at the day to day experience of your company’s employees. Currently, the two types of images you can upload here are the main image, which serves as a hero and highlight to your page, and the horizontal scrolling gallery of other company photos beneath.

LinkedIn Life tab image guidelines

• Recommended size for main image: 1128×376
• Recommended size for company photos: 900×600
• Recommended file type: JPG or PNG
• The Life tab only appears on the mobile app, and not the mobile web version of LinkedIn, so exact display sizes will vary by device. Upload the recommended size for the best experience.

Find more information in the LinkedIn Help Center.

LinkedIn Carousel Ads

A LinkedIn carousel is a slideshow-style post that allows readers to “swipe” across slides and read content. This LinkedIn ad type supports images for users to swipe through. Posts can include up to 10 slides and each image can have a link attached.

LinkedIn Carousel ad guidelines

• Recommend file size: 10MB
• Max image size: 4320×4320 pixels
• Recommended individual image size: 1080×1080
• Recommended individual image aspect ratio: 1:1
• Recommended image type: JPG, PNG, GIF (non-animated only)

Pinterest Image Sizes

Pinterest Profile Picture

When setting up your Pinterest account you have the option to do so using Facebook, Google or email. If you choose Facebook or Google, Pinterest will pull in the profile image that you have set there.

If you’re using email, or would prefer to use a different photo, you can do that too: just upload a square photograph (the larger the better) and Pinterest will resize it to fit. Like other social sites your profile picture on Pinterest should be something closely tied to you or your brand.

Pinterest profile picture image guidelines

• Recommended image size: 165×165 pixels
• Maximum file size: 10MB
• Recommended image type: JPG and PNG

Pinterest Pin Sizes

When adding a pin to your board, it’s important to remember that Pinterest puts a limit on the width of the image but not the length. This gives you the opportunity to add a photo that’s square or one that will scale to be even taller. Just remember to make sure you’re creating large images because they add more value, not just because you can.

Pinterest Pin sizes image guidelines

• Recommended image size: 735×1102 pixels
• Recommended ratio: 2:3
• Recommended file size: 20MB max
• Recommended file type: JPG, PNG, GIF
• Note: Larger are resized to display at a width of 238 pixels with scaled height in feeds.

Sprout Guidelines:

• Same as above, except:
• Maximum number of images per post: 1
• Maximum image size: 10MB
• Supported file types: JPG, PNG, GIF

Text Guidelines

• Title character count: 100 characters max
• Textbox character count: 250 characters max

Pinterest Board Display

Creating boards is one of the most important things that you can do on Pinterest. Not only is it important to choose a photo that is enticing to your audience, it’s important to choose one that’s relevant to that particular board.

Pinterest Board display image guidelines

• Final display: 222×150 pixels (large thumbnail)
• Final display: 55×55 pixels (smaller thumbnail)

Find more information in the Pinterest Help Center.

YouTube Image Sizes

YouTube has more than 2.5 billion unique users every month and is available on hundreds of millions of devices. Millions of brands have already realized that YouTube is a great opportunity to reach their fan-base.

YouTube Channel Profile Image

YouTube allows you to select different profile image borders, but the dimensions stay the same. Ensure your YouTube has a profile image set up before you select your border.

YouTube Channel profile image guidelines

• Recommended image size: 800×800 pixels
• Minimum image size: 98×98 pixels
• Maximum file size: 4MB
• Recommended image files: PNG or GIF (no animations)

YouTube Channel Cover Photo

Spice up your YouTube channel with some “channel art.” When users click through your YouTube videos to your channel, some appealing images could entice them to stay on your page longer and watch more of your videos.

YouTube Channel cover photo image guidelines

• Recommended file size: 2560×1440 pixels
• Minimum file size: 2048×1152 pixels
• Safe area for mobile and web (without text and logo cropping): 1546×423 pixels
• Maximum file size: 6MB
• Recommended image files: PNG or GIF

Across Different Devices

There are a lot of different platforms and devices that users can stream YouTube on so it’s important that you review your creative across devices and confirm that the most important parts of your image, such as text or logos, are displaying legibly in the “safe zone” noted above.

Find more information in the YouTube Help Center.

YouTube Video Uploads

Uploading your content to YouTube is the one of the most important parts of establishing your presence on the site. Videos can tell viewers something about you as a person, or it could show off something that your business might offer.

YouTube video guidelines

• Videos must maintain a 16:9 aspect ratio. Smaller videos such as 4:3 will be pillarboxed to fit.
• YouTube Shorts must maintain a 9:16 aspect ratio and 1920×1080 pixels.

For more on the specifics of YouTube video optimization, or to size video on any other social network, check out our complete guide to social media video specs.

Google My Business Image Sizes

Google My Business has become an essential platform for businesses with local, brick-and-mortar presences to gain visibility and conduct their review management strategy.

Types of Images for Google My Business

• Logo: Your recognizable logo image. May not be available for all types of businesses–see Google guidelines for more detail.
• Cover photo: A photo of your business that will typically be the first one shown. Choose a photo that gives the best overall representation of your place of business for this photo.
• Business photo: You can use your other business photos to highlight different elements of your business or offices and help show off what local visiting customers should look for when they stop by.

For all three types of images, Google’s official guidelines recommend the below specs for the best appearance on the platform.

Google My Business image guidelines

• Recommended resolution: 720×720 pixels
• Minimum resolution: 250×250 pixels
• File size maximum: 5 MB
• Image file type: JPG or PNG

The post Always up-to-date guide to social media image sizes appeared first on Sprout Social.

Staying relevant and capturing your audience’s attention is a constant challenge for marketers. And now that brands rely on video content more than ever, it’s critical to use the correct social media video specs and advertising video sizes.

To simplify marketers’ efforts, we created a complete guide of every single social media video spec and advertising video dimension.

Before we start, here are some additional resources that keep the information in one place:

• Easily reference our social media video specs in our always up-to-date Google Doc.
• Check out our social media image sizes guide for help on static images.
• Want to get better results with video? Download our social media video content workbook.
• Find more information about Sprout-supported files and sizes in our Help Center.

Social Media Video Specs & Ad Sizes By Network

We’ve gathered data on each social network’s specific video sizes and specs. Simply click the links below to jump to your desired network:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• TikTok
• Twitter
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Snapchat

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Facebook Video Specs

Facebook video is consumed at higher rates each year, so it’s no wonder why so many marketers search for the correct Facebook video specs.

There are simply so many types of videos you can share on Facebook and the platform updates its design frequently. Each video format has different dimensions and specs, which can make it confusing to know whether or not you’re uploading the correct format for organic or paid posts. Follow the specs below to optimize your posts.

In-Feed Shared Post Video (Landscape & Portrait)

The most common type of video on Facebook comes from shared posts. This type of video lives in your Facebook Feed, and can be shared by brands or your friends. While it’s not as easy to get organic reach on Facebook, it’s still a viable way to share video.

You can choose between two video orientations: Landscape and Portrait. Here’s a look at the video specs for both.

Video Guidelines

• Resolution: 1280×720, 720×1280
• Minimum width: 1200 pixels
• Aspect ratio: 16:9, 9:16
• Max file size: 10GB
• Recommended video formats: MP4, MOV
• Video length: 1 second to 240 minutes
• Bitrate: 256kbps
• Frame rate: 30fps

Sprout Guidelines

• Same as above, except:
• Max file size: 3GB max in Sprout
• Video length: 45 minutes max, if uploading in Sprout
• Supported file types: MP4, MOV, AVI

Facebook Reels

The convenience of cross-posting your Instagram Reels to Facebook expands the reach of your videos. This format appears organically in feeds but often gets priority on Facebook feeds.

Video Guidelines

• Resolution: 1080p
• Aspect ratio: 9:16
• Max file size: No file size limit
• Recommended video formats: MP4
• Video length: 3 seconds to 90 seconds
• Frame rate: 24fps – 60fps

Sprout Guidelines

• Same as above, except:
• Video length: 60 seconds max
• Supported file types: MP4, MOV, AVI
• Frame rate: 30fps recommended in Sprout

Facebook Stories

Similar to Instagram Stories, you can post Facebook Stories to extend the reach of your posts. Users who may not follow you on Instagram will be able to view and interact with your Stories.

Video Guidelines

• Resolution: 1080p
• Minimum width: 500 pixels
• Aspect ratio: 9:16 and 4:5 to 1.91:1
• Max file size: 4GB
• Recommended video formats: MP4 or MOV
• Video length: 1 second to 60 seconds

Facebook Video Ad Specs

There are more than 10 million advertisers now on Facebook and having the right specs for your ads can be tricky. Each type of Facebook video ad is different, so let’s break down the specs for each type of video you can produce.

In-Feed Video Ads

These Facebook video ads are the sponsored equivalent of in-feed posts, and they follow similar guidelines to in-feed video posts.

Video guidelines

• Resolution: 1080×1080 minimum
• Minimum width: 120 pixels
• Minimum height: 120 pixels
• Aspect ratio: 1:1 (for desktop or mobile) or 4:5 (for mobile only)
• Max file size: 4GB
• Recommended video formats: MP4, MOV or GIF
• Video length: 1 seconds to 240 minutes
• Frame rate: 30fps

Character limits

• Primary text: 125 characters
• Headline: 27 characters
• Description: 27 characters

Carousel Video Ads

Facebook Carousel Video ads allow brands to showcase multiple videos (or images) and a landing page link within a user’s Facebook feed. It has grown in popularity because its unique scrolling feature allows users to see more content before clicking. In fact, Digiday estimated Carousel Ads to be 10x more effective than standard social media ads.

Video Guidelines

• Resolution: 1080×1080 minimum
• Aspect ratio: 1:1
• Max file size: 4GB
• Recommended video formats: MP4, MOV or GIF
• Video length: 1 seconds to 240 minutes
• Frame rate: 30fps

Character limits

• Primary text: 125 characters
• Headline: 32 characters
• Description: 18 characters
• Landing Page URL: Required

Collection Video Ads (Mobile)

The Facebook Collection ads showcase multiple images and a main video above it. This is perfect for displaying multiple products (or various colors of a single product) plus a video. The ad type has been popular so far with retailers and clothing companies as an instant storefront or lookbook.

Video Guidelines

• Resolution: 1080×1080 minimum
• Aspect ratio: 1:1
• Max file size: 4GB
• Recommended video formats: MP4, MOV or GIF
• Video length: 1 seconds to 240 minutes
• Frame rate: 30fps

Character Limits

• Primary text: 125 characters
• Headline max: 40 characters
• Landing Page URL: Required

Instant Experience Video Ads

Facebook Instant Experience ads open up a full-screen experience after the first click, which can be further customized with a variety of interactive features. This can include multiple video experiences, including features to auto-play on loop.

Video Guidelines

• Minimum width: 720 pixels
• Max file size: 4GB
• Recommended video formats: MP4, MOV
• Video length: Up to 2 minutes
• Frame rate: 30fps

Slideshow Video Ad

Facebook’s Slideshow videos were built for advertisers wanting to reach audiences with slower internet connections. Instead of a regular video, slideshows are just that–a slideshow of images or video in an ad display.

Video Guidelines

• Resolution: 1080×1080
• Aspect ratio: 16:9 or 1:1
• Recommended video formats: MP4 or MPV
• Slideshow duration length: 15 seconds

Facebook Stories Ads

Facebook added the Stories feature – photo or short video posts that are only available for 24 hours. In addition to user-generated organic posts, Stories ads are available to run between sets of posted Stories. While most users will be sharing immediate and organic updates from their phone’s camera, the guidelines for this format are similar for both paid and organic ad posts.

Video Guidelines

• Resolution: 1080×1080
• Minimum width: 500 pixels
• Aspect ratio: 9:16
• Max file size: 4GB
• Recommended video formats: MP4, MPV and GIF
• Video length: 1 second to 2 minutes
• Frame rate: 30fps

Character Limits

• Primary text: 125 characters
• Headline: 40 characters

For more information on the video specs for Facebook, visit the Facebook Help Center.

Instagram Video Specs

Instagram launched video capabilities in 2013 and quickly saw enough success to start advertising on the platform in 2015. Since then, video only continues to grow as an engaging social format. Needless to say, Instagram videos are absolutely worth the investment.

Carousel Video

Since 2015, Instagram crafted its video formats to allow three different styles: landscape, square and vertical. However, like the app, Instagram and how video is presented has evolve. Gone are the days of IGTV and Instagram Video. Video can be natively included as a post or carousel post, or they can be uploaded as Reels, but more on Reels later.

Video Guidelines

• Resolution: 1080×1080, 1080×1350
• Aspect ratio: 9:16
• Max file size: 4GB
• Recommended video formats: MP4, MOV
• Video length: 3 seconds to 60 minutes
• Frame rate: 23-60 fps

Sprout Guidelines

• Same as above, except:
• Max file size: 100MB in Sprout
• Video length: 60 seconds max

Instagram Reels

Introduced in 2020, Instagram Reels are another option for your video strategy on Instagram. These short-form, easily digestible videos are becoming the preferred type of content in Instagram feeds.

Fortunately for social content creators looking to easily generate a lot of content for Instagram, most of the video specs for Instagram Reels are fairly similar to other formats on the platform.

As Instagram has started to add separate tabs for different content types, thumbnails will be cropped differently on each view. If the viewer is on the first tab that has all content types, the thumbnail will be cropped to the traditional square post size of 1:1–center your subjects and plan to avoid undesirable vertical cropping.

Video Guidelines:

• Resolution: 720p minimum
• Frame rate: 30 fps minimum
• Aspect ratio: 1.91:1 and 9:16 recommended
• Max file size: 4GB max
• Recommended video formats: MP4 or MOV
• Video length: 3 seconds to 15 minutes
  • Recording in-app is limited to 90 seconds; users can upload videos up to 15 minutes

Sprout Guidelines

• Same as above, except:
• Max file size: 1GB in Sprout
• Max bitrate: 5 Mbps
• Video length: 60 seconds max

Cover Photo Size:

• Size: 420p x 654p
• Aspect ratio: 1:1.55

Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories are short-form videos that display for 24-hours on your profile. Followers and users can access your Stories directly from your profile; followers have the luxury of accessing your Stories directly from their feed, where Stories for accounts they follow display directly at the top of their screen.

Video Guidelines

• Resolution: 1080×1080
• Minimum width: 500 pixels
• Aspect ratio: 9:16
• Max file size: 4GB
• Recommended video formats: MP4, MOV or GIF
• Video length: 1 second to 90 seconds
• Frame rate: 23-60 fps

Character Limits

• Primary text: 125 characters

Consider leaving roughly 250 pixels of the top of the video free from text to avoid covering them with the profile icon.

Instagram Video Ad Specs

Instagram’s advertising revenue has significantly increased over the last year. In fact, Instagram reportedly earned $43.2 billion in ad revenue in 2022. The push for Instagram advertising is real and marketers have to be ready to take advantage with engaging videos.

Carousel Video Ad

Much like Facebook’s Carousel Ads, Instagram offers a similar feature. Carousel ads allow users to see more of a product or feature than a single image or video. With Instagram, your carousel video ads can have 2-10 cards with a full-width call to action below the ad.

Video Guidelines

• Resolution: 1080×1080
• Aspect ratio: 1:1
• Max file size: 4GB (video) 30MB (image)
• Recommended video formats: MP4, MOV or GIF
• Video length: 1 second to 2 minutes
• Number of Carousel cards: 2 (minimum) to 10 (maximum)
• Frame rate: 23-60 fps

Instagram Stories Ads

It didn’t take long for Instagram Stories to feature ads within users’ story feeds. Brands can seamlessly integrate their video content between other Instagram users’ Stories.

Video Guidelines

• Resolution: 1080×1080
• Minimum width: 500 pixels
• Aspect ratio: 9:16
• Max file size: 4GB
• Recommended video formats: MP4, MOV or GIF
• Video length: 1 second to 60 minutes
• Frame rate: 23-60 fps

Character Limits

• Primary text: 125 characters

Consider leaving roughly 250 pixels of the top of the video free from text to avoid covering them with the profile icon

If you’re looking for further information including images, check out our complete guide to all the Instagram ad sizes.

For more information on the video specs for Instagram, visit the Facebook Help Center.

Find more information about Sprout-supported files and sizes in our Help Center.

TikTok Video Specs

TikTok has quickly gained attention in the social space. Fortunately, TikTok’s focus on easy to create and share videos means it’s not hard to start producing video content for the platform, and there are plenty of trends to inspire TikTok content creation.

TikTok In-Feed Videos

TikTok videos are all about the ease of creation, editing and sharing, so it makes sense that specs are more or less oriented around typical mobile phone dimensions. One key trait to keep in mind if you’re trying to repurpose video content across platforms is that videos uploaded from another file source, rather than recorded on the app, can be longer than 60 seconds.

Video Guidelines

• Resolution: 1080×1920
• Aspect ratio: 9:16
• Max file size: 72MB (Android users) and 278.6MB (iOS users)
• Recommended video formats: MP4 or MOV
• Video length: Up to 3 minutes recorded in-app or 10 minutes when uploaded from another source
• Frame rate: 23-60fps

Sprout Guidelines

• Same as above, except:
• Max file size: 1GB max in Sprout
• Video length: 10 minutes max, if uploading in Sprout
• Supported file types: MP4, MOV, WEBM

TikTok Feed Ads

TikTok ads are a rapidly evolving opportunity for brands. The in-feed option for paid TikTok content is fairly similar to the formatting for existing organic content. To fine-tune paid content for the best performance, be sure to consult TikTok’s business center for the latest tips.

Video Guidelines

• Resolution: 540×960, 640×640 or 960×540
• Aspect ratio: 9:16, 1:1 or 16:9
• Max file size: Up to 500MB
• Recommended video formats: MP4, MOV, MPEG, 3PG or AVI
• Video length: 5 seconds to 60 seconds
• Bitrate: 516 kbps minimum
• Frame rate: 23-60fps

Character Limits

• Ad description: 1-100 Latin alphabet letters and 1-50 Asian characters

Twitter Video Specs

X (formerly Twitter) is a popular space to share and interact with different social media videos. For marketers, it’s all about keeping a user’s attention with enthralling and click-worthy video content. In the sports and entertainment industry, Twitter is often the go-to for sharing video content, so it’s critical to learn the correct Twitter video specs.

Twitter Landscape & Portrait Videos

Twitter provides two formats of in-feed video content to share with your followers: landscape and portrait. These specific formats are only available for uploading video directly to Twitter, rather than sharing YouTube or other links.

Video Guidelines

• Resolution: 1280×720 (landscape), 720×1280 (portrait), 720×720 (square)
• Aspect ratio: 16:9 (landscape or portrait), 1:1 (square)
• Max file size: 512MB*
• Video length: 0.5 seconds to 140 seconds*
• Frame rate: 30fps or 60fps

*Twitter Pro Media users can upload files up to 1GB and videos up to 10 minutes.

Sprout Guidelines

• Same as above, except:
• Max file size: 512MB max in Sprout
• Video length: 140 seconds max, if uploading in Sprout
• Supported file types: MP4, MOV

Character Limits

• Maximum count: 280 characters.

Twitter Videos Ad Specs

Looking to promote your video through paid ads on Twitter? Luckily, you can use the same exact formats from Twitter organic videos. Stick to the same specs for both organic and paid video to ensure maximum visibility.

Video Guidelines

• Resolution: 1280×720 (landscape), 720×1280 (portrait), 720×720 (square)
• Aspect ratio: 16:9 (landscape or portrait), 1:1 (square)
• Max file size: 512MB
• Video length: 0.5 seconds to 140 seconds
• Frame rate: 30fps or 60fps

Character Limits

• Maximum count: 280 characters.

For more information on the video specs for Twitter, visit the Twitter Help Center.

YouTube Video Specs

As the second-largest search engine behind Google, YouTube is an essential network for video content. For marketers, YouTube is a great space to promote, educate and share video content around your brand.

As YouTube continues to grow as a destination for video content, it hosts everything from short-form promotional videos to full-length movies and TV. This means users are streaming content on all sorts of devices, which could have different levels of zoom or overscan.

While there’s no hard and fast rules from the platform on how to approach the video editing concept of “title safe” areas where text like titles and subtitles aren’t cut off, you do want to avoid placing these types of visual elements right at the edges of your video area. Read on for more specifics on each format available on YouTube.

Video Player (Standard YouTube Video)

While YouTube allows users to upload various types of media formats and use plenty of different dimensions, organically, there’s truly only one format for the video player. Organic videos should all follow a 16:9 ratio, but can be uploaded 4:3. However, the smaller ratio will automatically pillarbox the sides to still make it fit in the player.

YouTube has seven recommended dimensions and ratios for standard YouTube videos:

Video Guidelines for Non-Verified Accounts

• Resolution:
  • 4320p (8k): 7680×4320
  • 2160p (4K): 3840×2160
  • 1440p (2k): 2560×1440
  • 1080p (HD): 1920×1080
  • 720p (HD): 1280×720
  • 480p (SD): 854×480
  • 360p (SD): 640×360
  • 240p (SD): 426×240
• Aspect ratio: 16:9 default
• Max file size: 5GB max in Sprout
• Recommended video formats: MOV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG4, MP4, MPG, AVI, WMV, MPEGPS, FLV, 3GPP, WebM, DNxHR, ProRes, CineForm, HEVC (h265)
• Video length: Up to 15 minutes
• Frame rate: 24, 25 or 30fps

Sprout Guidelines

• Same as above, except:
• Max file size: 5GB max in Sprout
• Video length: 15 minutes max, if uploading in Sprout
• Supported file types: MP4, MOV

Video Guidelines for Verified Accounts

• Resolution:
  • 4320p (8k): 7680×4320
  • 2160p (4K): 3840×2160
  • 1440p (2k): 2560×1440
  • 1080p (HD): 1920×1080
  • 720p (HD): 1280×720
  • 480p (SD): 854×480
  • 360p (SD): 640×360
  • 240p (SD): 426×240
• Aspect ratio: 16:9 default
• Max file size: 256GB or 12 hours, whichever is less
• Recommended video formats: MOV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG4, MP4, MPG, AVI, WMV, MPEGPS, FLV, 3GPP, WebM, DNxHR, ProRes, CineForm, HEVC (h265)
• Video length: Up to 12 hours, dependent on file size
• Frame rate: 24, 25 or 30fps

Sprout Guidelines

• Same as above, except:
• Max file size: 128GB max in Sprout
• Video length: 12 hours max, if uploading in Sprout
• Supported file types: MP4, MOV

YouTube Shorts

Introduced late 2020, YouTube Shorts have recently made its debut as another short-form video feature. These videos are a new way to watch, create and discover short-form content. Because people are watching more short-form videos globally, using Shorts is a new way to reach wider audiences to entertain or educate.

Video Guidelines

• Resolution:
  • 4320p (8k): 4320×7680
  • 2160p (4K): 2160×3840
  • 1440p (2k): 1440×2560
  • 1080p (HD): 1080×1920
  • 720p (HD): 720×1280
  • 480p (SD): 480×854
  • 360p (SD): 360×640
  • 240p (SD): 240×426
• Aspect ratio: 9:16 or 1:1
• Recommended video formats: MOV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG4, MP4, MPG, AVI, WMV, MPEGPS, FLV, 3GPP, WebM, DNxHR, ProRes, CineForm, HEVC (h265)
• Video length: Up to 60 seconds

For more information on the video specs for YouTube, visit the Google Help Center.

YouTube Video Ad Specs

Standard YouTube videos are pretty straightforward, but there are a few video ad formats to learn if you want to advertise on the network. According to data from Google, brands advertising on YouTube with Discovery ads see incremental conversions.

Skippable, Non-Skippable, Mid-Roll, Bumper Video, In-Feed Display Ads

We’ve put these five YouTube video ads specs together because in the end, they all play through the standard YouTube video player. That means all of these ad types follow the same dimensions as the non-ad videos, but only differ in video length. Let’s look at each ad type:

• Skippable Video Ad: This YouTube ad type is played before, during or after the content and becomes skippable after 5 seconds. This ad format is the only one allowing advertisers to monetize views from any viewing device.
• Non-Skippable Video Ad: This YouTube ad type is played before the content and users must watch the full 15 seconds maximum ad (can also be added during or after video).
• Mid-roll Video Ad: This YouTube ad type is played mid-view (like TV commercials) and is only available for videos 8 minutes or longer. Ads are added either manually or automatically. Mid-rolls can be skippable, but users must watch 30 seconds or the entire ad (whichever is shorter).
• Bumper Video Ads: This YouTube ad type is played before the content. This short 6-second max video cannot be skipped and is usually optimized for mobile views.
• Display Ads: These ads are shown in users’ search queries and sometimes appear in the right video column when watching a video. These ads are static, which means they don’t automatically play. However, once the video is clicked, the type of content displayed can simply follow the standard video player guidelines.

Video Guidelines

• Resolution: 1920 x 1080 (horizontal), 1080 x 1920 (vertical), 1080 x 1080 (square)
• Aspect ratio: 16:9 (horizontal), 9:16 (vertical), 1:1 (square)
• Max file size: 256GB
• Recommended video formats: MPG
• Video length:
  • Skippable Video Ad: No maximum, but recommended 15 – 20 seconds for awareness, 2 – 3 minutes for consideration, and 15 – 20 seconds for action.
  • Non-Skippable Video Ad: 15 or 20 seconds, depending on marketing
  • Mid-roll Video Ad: 30 seconds minimum
  • Bumper Video Ad: 6 seconds maximum
  • In-Feed (Display) Video Ad: 15-20 seconds for awareness, 2-3 minutes for consideration

For more information on the video specs for YouTube, visit the Google Help Center.

LinkedIn Video Specs

With 66% of consumers finding short-form video the most engaging type of in-feed social content, LinkedIn adopted the use of video on the platform. If you’re looking to incorporate video into your LinkedIn marketing strategy, then it’s important to do it with the right specs. While some technical requirements may match other networks, there are some specs that are specific to LinkedIn.

LinkedIn In-Feed Video

While before the only video format you were able to upload was a shared video, LinkedIn has expanded its capabilities to upload your own videos into the platform.

LinkedIn video sizes

• Resolution: 256×144 (min) and 4096×2304 (max)
• Aspect ratio: 1:2.4, 2.4:1
• Max file size: 5GB
• Recommended video formats: AAC, ASF, FLV, MP3, MP4, MPEG-1, MPEG-4, MKV, WebM, H264/AVC, Vorbis, VP8, VP9, WMV2, WMV3
• Video length: Up to 10 minutes
• Frame rate: 60fps
• Bitrate: Up to 30mbps

Sprout Guidelines

• Same as above, except:
• Max file size: 5GB max in Sprout for Company and Personal Pages
• Video length: 10 minutes max, if uploading in Sprout
• Supported file types: ASF, AVI, MP4, FLV, MKV, WEBM, Quicktime

For more information on the video specs for LinkedIn, visit the LinkedIn Help Center.

LinkedIn Video Ads

As of 2018, LinkedIn now offers video ads. The requirements are a little bit different than in-feed video, so be sure to consider them when developing ads for your paid campaign.

Video Guidelines

• Recommended dimensions and resolutions:
  • Vertical (4:5): Min 360 x 450 pixels, Max 1536 x 1920 pixels
  • Vertical (9:16): Min 360 x 640 pixels, Max 1080 x 1920 pixels
  • Landscape (16:9): Min 640 x 360 pixels, Max 1920 x 1080 pixels
  • Square (1:1): Min 360 x 360 pixels, Max 1920 x 1920 pixels
• Aspect ratio:
  • Vertical: 4:5, 9:16
  • Landscape: 16:9
  • Square: 1:1
• Max file size: 200MB
• Recommended video formats: MP4
• Video length: 3 seconds to 30 minutes
• Frame rate: 30fps

Character Limits

• Ad name: 255 characters
• Headline: 70 characters recommended; 200 characters maximum
• Introductory text: 150 characters recommended; 600 characters maximum

For more information on the video specs for LinkedIn ads, visit LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Help.

Pinterest Promoted Video Specs

Pinterest allows video upload for business accounts only, so they have specs designed for brands to get the most out of the highly visual and inspirational lifestyle content frequently shared on the platform.

Shared Video Pins and Standard Width Video Ads

In addition to ads, Pinterest Business Accounts can upload organic video content. There are two formats: standard and max width video. Below are the dimensions for standard width video ads and standard Pins.

Video Guidelines

• Aspect ratio: 1:1, 2:3, 4:5, 9:16
• Max file size: 2GB
• Recommended video formats: MP4, MOV or M4V
• Video length: 4 seconds to 15 minutes

Character Limits

• Title: Up to 100 characters
• Description: Up to 500 characters

Max Width Video Ads

Pinterest allows you to publish standard width and maximum width video ads. Maximum width videos expand across mobile users’ entire screens. These specs apply only to maximum width video ads; standard video ad specs can be found above. Note that maximum width video ads are only paid ads.

Video Guidelines

• Aspect ratio: 1:1
• Max file size: 2GB
• Recommended video formats: MP4, MOV or M4V
• Video length: 4 seconds to 15 minutes

Character Limits

• Title: Up to 100 characters
• Description: Up to 500 characters

For more information on the video specs for Pinterest ads, visit Pinterest Business Help.

Snapchat Video Specs

Snapchat is still an active network for younger generations to share video content. Whether it’s through FOMO-inducing filters, Snapchat is a hotbed for video sharing.

Single Videos and Single Video Ad

This video format is the most common across the channel and is the main way users communicate back and forth through the app. However, your business can post videos to its story so others can see what your business is up to. Just follow these specs:

Video Guidelines

• Resolution: 1080×1920
• Aspect ratio: 9:16
• Max file size: 1GB
• Recommended video formats: MP4 or MOV
• Video length: 3 seconds to 180 seconds

Character Limits

• Brand: 25 characters
• Headline: 34 characters

Long-Form Story Video Ad

Snapchat currently offers one main video format for ads, which is known as the Story Ad. However, the Snapchat Story Video Ad is what users see in between viewing users’ Stories.

Video Guidelines

• Resolution: 1080×1920
• Aspect ratio: 9:16
• Max file size: 1GB
• Recommended video formats: MP4 or MOV
• Video length: 3 seconds to 180 seconds

Character Limits

• Brand: 25 characters
• Headline: 34 characters

For more information on the video specs for Snapchat, visit the Snapchat Ads Help Center.

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The post Always Up-to-Date Guide to Social Media Video Specs [Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat] appeared first on Sprout Social.

When you have access to the latest social media stats about the platform, you can understand how to best engage your audience. This is crucial if you want to attract more followers and grow your X community.

The 2023 Sprout Social Index™ found that 45% of consumers follow a brand on social for their enjoyable and entertaining content. Staying on top of Twitter statistics will show you the types of content and topics that drive engagement.

While platforms like Facebook and Instagram might have more users, X’s audience is active, engaged and plugged in. And for brands, it is a valuable channel to connect with their audience.

Check out these 40 Twitter statistics to inspire and guide your social media strategy this year.

General Twitter (X) stats every marketer should know

1. Number of users worldwide: 415 million
2. Monthly active users: 335.7 million
3. Worldwide usage ranking: 12^th most popular social network
4. Annual user growth rate: 5% decline
5. Ownership: Privately held

X is at a unique crossroads. For one thing, new ownership has spurred renewed interest in the platform and increased user activity. At the same time, the platform has seen major upheavals including a complete rebranding and a monthly fee for verification.

These changes are driving some users away from the platform, leading to a decrease in monthly active users. According to projections, the number of monthly active users will drop to 335.7 million in 2024.

(Pro tip: Use Twitter analytics tools to track if these changes are affecting your brand’s audience performance.)

In line with this trend, the platform will also see a decline in annual user growth rate. In 2023, Statista reported a 4% decrease in monthly active users on X. For 2024, the platform is likely to see a 5% decline in monthly active users.

However, the latest Statista reports show that the platform still has a total of 415 million users worldwide. That means more than 80% of X’s total registered users use the platform every month.

But keep in mind that X is still in a transition stage, so don’t discount the platform just yet. As the 12^th most popular social media network, it remains a major player in the social media game.

Source: Statista

Twitter (X) usage statistics that prove the platform’s impact

6. Monetizable daily active users: 237.8 million
7. Average daily usage: 34.1 minutes
8. Worldwide daily engagement ranking: Third most-used social network
9. Number of monthly website visits: 6.2 billion
10. Median engagement rate: 0.029%
11. Median number of Tweets per week: 3.31
12. Top content preference on X: Informative
13. Number of X users using it as a news source: 53%

In spite of the decline in monthly active users, daily active usage on X is seeing an increase. According to the latest available data, there were 237.8 million monetizable daily active users on the platform in Q2 of 2022. That’s more than 57% of the platform’s users logging in daily.

This marked an increase from the previous quarter, where it had 229 million monetizable daily active users.

The good news is that X’s daily time spent continues to stay about the same. People are spending an average of 34.1 minutes per day on the platform. This makes it the third most used social network, surpassing Instagram.

For context, people are spending 33.1 minutes on Instagram each day, a platform that far surpasses X in popularity. And Facebook, in spite of having the largest number of monthly active users, only sees about 30.9 minutes of daily usage.

So there’s no denying X has the potential to help brands grow their communities by gaining new, highly-engaged followers.

Source: Statista

In line with the growing X usage statistics, visits to the Twitter.com website have also seen an increase. For the month of December 2023, there were 6.2 billion visits to the website. In the previous month, there had been 5.9 billion visits to the website.

At the same time, engagement rate and Tweet frequency on the platform are on the decline. RivalIQ’s study revealed a 20% decline in engagement rate. Now the median engagement rate on X is 0.029% across all industries.

For the time being, brand accounts are also Tweeting much less frequently. The median Tweet frequency was 3.31 Tweets per week—a 15% decrease from the previous year.

But this doesn’t negate the platform’s role in driving conversations around trending topics. X continues to be the top source of news among all social media sites. A 2023 study found that 53% of the platform’s users regularly use it to get news.

This finding is in line with X users having a preference for information-type content on the platform. About 55% of users prefer to see informative content, making it the most preferred content type. Additionally, users show a preference for relevant, engaging and trendy content. As such, brands using the platform can make a mark by participating in trending conversations.

Source: Statista

Twitter (X) user statistics to help reach your audience

14. Gender distribution: 60.9% male, 39.1% female (Note: Sprout Social acknowledges gender isn’t binary, but our data sources limit their reporting to male and female.)
15. Men are more likely to reach out to brands on X
16. Age distribution: 36.6% between the ages of 25 and 34
17. Top locations: United States, Japan, India
18. Cross-platform usage: Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook
19. Education level and income: 29% are college graduates and make more than $100,000 annually
20. Top community: Suburban
21. Sentiment trends: 33% have a favorable impression
22. Reaction to the new X logo: 33.57% neutral

To maximize your chance of reaching your target audience on X, you need to understand the demographic breakdown of its user base.

The platform tends to sway male, with 60.9% of users identifying as such. Male X users are also most likely to reach out to brands on the platform. A Khoros study found that 81% of male X users have reached out to a brand on the platform. The number is lower among female users with 68% having done the same.

X’s popularity among the Millennial population hasn’t dwindled. It’s most popular with people between the ages of 25 and 34 years old, and least popular with teens. Users within this age range are also most active on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Pew Research Center’s study on social media demographics noted that 29% of U.S. X users are college graduates. About 49% of the platform’s user base earns more than $70,000 annually while 29% make more than $100,000 annually. This highlights the platform’s highly-educated and high-earning base.

Moreover, X sees the most usage among suburban communities (26%). Urban communities follow close behind at 25%.

Countries leading in X usage include the U.S., Japan and India.

X’s core users loudly express their feelings about the platform. Many have raised concerns about platform glitches, new features, privacy and proposed paywalls. While Twitter sentiment has ebbed and flowed, most users are pulling for the platform to regain its wings.

In fact, 33% of U.S. adults still have a favorable impression of the platform. Additionally, 40% of users expressed that they’re likely to still use X in a year’s time.

Changes such as the platform’s new logo didn’t garner many negative reactions. One-quarter of respondents felt positively about it. Meanwhile, 33.57% had a neutral feeling about the rebranding.

Twitter (X) statistics for advertisers

23. Annual ad revenue: $2.98 billion
24. Ad engagement: 7% increase from 2021 to 2022
25. Cost per engagement: 10% increase from 2021 to 2022
26. Average ad cost (per first action): $0.26 – $0.50
27. Average ad cost (per follow): $1.01 – $2.00
28. Industry inclusivity: Only major social platform to allow cannabis advertising

Advertising on Twitter takes multiple forms. This includes promoted Tweets, accounts and trending topics among many others. The platform strives to continuously roll out new high-impact ad types to meet evolving consumer behavior.

In spite of this, ad revenue on the platform has witnessed a decline in the past couple of years.

As a result of the drop in monthly active users, there’s a looming uncertainty over the platform’s financial health. A March 2023 forecast predicted that the platform will generate $2.98 in ad revenue. While this would be a 27.9% drop compared to the previous year, the decline will slow down in 2024 according to the same projections. X hasn’t published updated revenue data supporting or challenging these forecasts.

Source: Oberlo

Meanwhile, additional sources report a 7% increase in X ad engagement between 2021 and 2022. With this engagement boost, the cost of advertising on the platform also increased. There was a 10% increase in cost per engagement during the same period.

In spite of this, the ad cost is comparable to Facebook and still significantly lower than LinkedIn. The typical cost per first action or cost per click on X is $0.26 to $0.50. meanwhile, LinkedIn has a cost per click of $2 to $3. Additionally, brands can expect to spend around $1.01 to $2 per follow for promoted accounts on X.

From offering discounted ads to allowing cannabis advertising, X is making attractive appeals for brands to reinvest in the platform. (If your brand sells cannabis, bookmark our article: How cannabis brands elevate their social media content.)

Twitter (X) stats businesses need to inform their strategy

29. Best time to post: Mondays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to noon and Tuesdays through Thursdays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
30. Posting frequency for top brands: 3.75x per week
31. Engagement rate for top brands: 0.102%
32. Percentage of Tweets with emojis: 26.7%
33. Discoverability: #1 platform
34. X users are 2x more likely to have made an in-app purchase
35. X users are 36% more likely to be the first to try new things
36. Number of users who’ve engaged with a brand: 75%
37. Top engagement intent: Customer care
38. 64% of X users prefer sending a message than calling a business
39. Expected response time: Three hours or less
40. One-third of users made a purchase after a positive experience on X

When you build your Twitter marketing strategy, it’s imperative to align your content with the style of the network. For example, X is a fast-moving platform, and your Tweets are easy to miss if you post at the wrong time. Overall, the best times to post are Mondays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to noon. Tuesdays through Thursdays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. are also good times to post. But you should find the best time to post on Twitter for your industry and audience.

By sending out your Tweets at the best time, you can catch your audience when they’re most active. This allows you to drive higher engagements for your brand’s X account.

For context, RivalIQ reports that the top brands on X have an engagement rate of about 0.102%. So anything around this range should be a good engagement rate on the platform. Moreover, they Tweet at a frequency of 3.75 times per week.

If you’re looking to get more engagements, make sure to throw in several emojis in your Tweets to make them stand out. Between 2013 and 2023, the platform has seen a significant increase in the number of posts containing emojis. Now 26.7% of Tweets worldwide have an emoji.

Despite a low brand engagement rate, X is the number one platform for discoverability. And its superpower is helping brands gain exposure to an audience eager to try something new. According to X, 36% of people on the platform are more likely to be the first to buy new products. They’re also twice as likely to have made an in-app purchase compared to users on other platforms.

Consumers aren’t just on the platform for Twitter ecommerce, though. The previously cited Khoros study found that 75% of X users have engaged with a brand on the platform. Among these, the top engagement intent was customer care with 53% of users reaching out to resolve care-related issues.

This makes it the top social media platform for seeking customer care. The latest social media customer service stats also show that 64% of X users would rather reach out to a brand on X than call the business.

Source: Khoros

These numbers highlight how crucial it is for brands to provide assistance to their customers on the platform. But not just any assistance would do. Consumers are expecting brands to provide a swift response to their care-related issues.

The Khoros study reveals that 50% of X users expect a response to their complaint within three hours. This is regardless of whether they shared a complaint publicly or in a private message. Meeting this expected timeframe could improve loyalty to your brand. 45% of users also become more receptive to the brand’s advertisements.

Source: Khoros

In fact, a positive Twitter customer service experience could drive purchase decisions. One-third of X users would buy a product or service after a positive customer experience on the platform.

Use Twitter marketing statistics to help your brand soar

These key Twitter statistics prove the platform could still play a vital role in your brand’s social media strategy. But like all social media platforms, your brand’s performance on X is what you make it.

Even in the midst of the platform’s evolution, you can find stability and success if you ground your strategy in data. Use the 40 Twitter stats we shared in this article to refine your tactics to better resonate with your target audience.

Start asking yourself questions like:

• Is my target audience using X more or less than I anticipated?
• What does my target audience use X for?
• What is my brand’s return on paid investment on the platform?
• Am I reaching my audience at the best time?
• Is my company’s X customer service workflow meeting expectations?

Use your answers to guide your company’s approach to the platform in 2024, and watch your presence take off. Keep iterating on your strategy with the latest tools and features to best use Twitter for business.

The post 40 Twitter (X) stats to know in marketing in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

As social media teams across the world figure out strategies to not only incorporate Threads  but also excel at it, this webinar will examine what we’ve learnt so far and explore thoughts on what we think is in store. 

Hear insights from social media consultant and industry analyst, Matt Navarra, and Senior Social Media Manager from financial favourite and industry disrupter, Monzo.

You will learn:

• The current state of Threads and how early adopter brands leverage its capabilities
• How businesses can use Threads for community building, customer care and more
• Key distinctions and differentiations between Threads strategy vs. other social channels
• Predictions for 2024 and beyond

Your speakers:

The post The Rise and Fall Of New Platforms: What Threads Has Taught Us About Emerging Social Media appeared first on Sprout Social.

In this post, we’ve put together a quick guide breaking down how to make the most of Twitter’s advanced search features. This will help you better narrow down the most relevant interactions for your brand.

Read on to find out what Twitter advanced search is and how to use it strategically for your brand.

Table of contents

• What is Twitter advanced search?
• How to access Twitter advanced search
• How to use Twitter advanced search
• Twitter advanced search commands and operators
• 7 impactful ways to use Twitter advanced search
• How to use Sprout Social to enhance your Twitter searches

What is Twitter advanced search?

Twitter advanced search is a tool that lets you tailor your search results based on a number of filters. This makes it easier to find Tweets that are highly specific and relevant to your needs. So you can gain valuable insights to maximize the benefits of Twitter for your brand.

This Twitter search feature lets you search for Tweets containing specific words, hashtags and phrases. You can even exclude keywords or search Tweets from specific accounts. The feature further lets you filter results by number of engagements, date ranges and other filters.

How to access Twitter advanced search

Twitter advanced search on desktop

There are two ways to access the Twitter advanced search tool via desktop.

• The first option is to directly access it from https://twitter.com/search-advanced.
• The second option is to first conduct a search using the regular Twitter search feature. Then click on the three-dot button next to the search bar and select “Advanced search.”

Twitter advanced search on mobile

Mobile users can access the advanced search tool through their mobile browser. Just like on desktop, there are two ways to access Twitter advanced search on mobile.

• The first option is to open your mobile browser and directly go to https://mobile.twitter.com/search-advanced.
• The second option is to first conduct a regular Twitter search from your mobile browser. Then click on the three-dot button next to the search bar and select “Advanced search.”

How to use Twitter advanced search

The advanced search tool offers plenty of ways to refine your search results. This helps you discover specific Tweets and conversations to make the most of Twitter for your business. Here’s a quick look at how to search on Twitter using the advanced search tool.

Searching for specific words, phrases and hashtags

• All of these words – Provide two or more words and search for Tweets containing all those terms in no specific order.
• This exact phrase – Search for Tweets matching the exact phrase. You can use this to look for Tweets containing names, quotes and precise terminologies.
• Any of these words – Provide two or more words and search for Tweets containing any of those terms. For example, a search for “coffee beans” may show Tweets containing only “coffee” or only “beans.”
• None of these words – Exclude Tweets containing certain words. This is great for filtering irrelevant Tweets from your search results.
• These hashtags – Look for Tweets containing specific hashtags.
• Language – Filter your search results to find only those Tweets written in a specific language.

Searching for users or accounts

• From these accounts – Search for Tweets coming from specific accounts. If you use this alongside the word search, you could even look for Tweets containing certain words sent from those accounts. So, for example, you could search for Tweets by @twitter containing the phrase “customer support.”
• To these accounts – Search for Tweets sent to specific accounts. This would include Tweets sent in reply to those accounts.
• Mentioning these accounts – Look for Tweets mentioning certain accounts.

Combining these search options will help you easily find conversations between different accounts. For example, you’d be able to look for Tweets from Wendy’s to Chipotle or vice versa.

Searching for Tweets by date

Advanced search gives you the option to look for Tweets sent out within a specific date range. You can narrow your search by year, month and date.

Searching based on engagement

One useful feature is the ability to filter search results by engagement. You can look for Tweets containing at least X number of replies, X number of likes and X number of Retweets.

Using search filters

Advanced search further lets you narrow your results based on several filters. You can choose to exclude or include replies. Or you can choose to only show replies and exclude original Tweets.

Similarly, you can choose to include Tweets with links or only show Tweets with links.

Twitter advanced search commands and operators

Besides the advanced search tool, Twitter offers a few additional resources to refine your search. Make the most of its standard search operators to perform advanced searches on the platform.

These search operators work similarly to Twitter’s advanced search. The main difference is you can enter them directly into the normal search function.

For example, let’s say you’re planning a Disney vacation and have a family member with dietary restrictions. Maybe you want to see the Twitterverse’s experiences with Disney’s dining options. So you search “Disney” and “allergy” (in quotations, separately) to score some real-time information and feedback.

There are a number of Twitter search operators and queries out there. And brands can use them for everything from customer service to competitive research. Whether you use these operators in the standard search field or the advanced search UI comes down to your preferences. If you’d like a handy reminder of your options for Twitter search operators, check out the cheat sheet below.

Image Source: Twitter

7 impactful ways to use Twitter advanced search

According to the latest Twitter stats, 15% of users turn to the platform for customer service. Meanwhile, 32% of brands are using it to deliver customer service. So there’s a huge opportunity for brands to use Twitter advanced search for ramping up their customer service efforts.

But that’s not all. Check out these seven impactful ways to use advanced search on Twitter.

1. Zero in on customer questions and concerns

Twitter is the go-to channel for customer support. And using the right search queries can help you prioritize your fans’ issues.

Perform advanced searches including your @account and terms such as “help,” “support” and “service.” This can help clue you in on anyone having a problem. Additionally, you can tack on a question mark (“?”) to that query to spot anyone who has a question for you.

2. Find ideas for content

Twitter is a hub for trending conversations. People go to the platform to talk about trending topics and discuss important events. These conversations can show you what your audience is talking about and what they’re interested in. Based on these interests, you can then understand what types of content will resonate with them.

As such, Twitter serves as a valuable source of inspiration for content–whether it’s your next blog post or live broadcast.

Use Twitter advanced search to see what people are saying about a specific topic. Then use those conversations to get a sense of what they’re interested in. For example, you might find that people are talking about sustainable coffee. You could then put together a blog post discussing the topic to educate your audience.

3. Find relevant industry influencers

Want to know who are the biggest players in your industry? Or whose content is totally killin’ it?

Searching by engagement parameters can help you do just that.

This would involve filtering search results to narrow down Tweets with higher engagements. In general, influential users get more likes and Retweets compared to regular users. Performing this type of advanced search can help you zero in on users who are leading the conversation around certain topics.

4. Spot positive customer comments

Brands are rightfully concerned about their reputation with fans and followers. And the advanced search functionality is a great way to conduct Twitter listening and monitor brand reputation.

You can conduct a surface-level sentiment analysis by searching for positive keywords along with your brand name. Think “best,” “happy,” “excellent” and so on. You can even tack on emoticons such as “:)”.

These can reveal Tweets in which customers share positive experiences with your brand. So they give you the perfect opportunity to respond and engage and nurture your relationship with them.

5. Never miss another mention

Spoiler alert: not everyone talking about you online is taking the time to tag you.

Save a Twitter advanced query that includes your brand name, common misspellings and your website. This will give you a good start to monitoring social mentions more diligently. So you can send timely responses and prevent further disappointment.

Sleeping on such an interaction could be bad news for your business, especially if it’s a customer complaint on the line.

You’ll find the option to “save search” by clicking on the three-dot button next to the search window.

6. Monitor your competitors

Want to see what people are saying about the competition? Or how your competitors are responding to their customers?

Run an advanced search to look for Tweets mentioning your biggest competitors. Then analyze those Tweets to understand why people love (or hate) your competitors.

This could give you insights to strengthen your Twitter communications strategy. You can even use the insights to inform your larger marketing and promotion efforts.

Sprout Social’s Twitter analytics tools make it even easier to do a competitor analysis. You can do a side-by-side Twitter profile comparison to see how you stack up to your top competitors.

7. Identify your most popular Tweets

Curious to see which of your Tweets are resonating with your audience? Use Twitter’s advanced search to look for your Tweets with a certain number of likes and Retweets.

For example, you could search for Tweets with at least 50 likes and 20 Retweets.

How to use Sprout Social to enhance your Twitter searches

Twitter lets you run complex searches for @mentions, hashtags, keyword groups and exclusions. But there are more operators out there to narrow down the search even more.

This means that you need to have a strategy for not only figuring out relevant searches for your brand but also organizing them.

Sprout’s Twitter integration helps you streamline your searches and monitor relevant keywords in one place. Use it to set up keyword searches and identify relevant conversations for your brand. You can then keep track of all these conversations through a single Smart Inbox. From the same social inbox, you can engage with mentions and replies instead of having to switch platforms.

Using Twitter advanced search for advanced results

The Twitter advanced search feature allows you to uncover valuable conversations and insights for your brand. Make the most of the tips and ideas shared above to maximize the outcome of your Twitter strategy.

If you ever feel overwhelmed trying to make the platform work for you, don’t forget there are plenty of Twitter tools to make your job easier. Use them to your advantage and get more out of Twitter for your brand.

Use of Twitter nomenclature across Sprout refers to newly rebranded X platform and related terminology

The post How to use Twitter advanced search to get more leads for your brand appeared first on Sprout Social.

With 238 million monetizable users logging into the app daily, Twitter marketing helps brands connect with potential customers, influence purchase decisions and stay ahead of industry trends. The platform boasts over 556 monthly active users. And 55% of these users check the app daily for the latest news, self-expression, entertainment, networking and more. There’s as much funny meme content on Twitter as political discussions and updates. And that’s only a few reasons why Twitter is a power marketing channel.

In this article, you’ll learn all about using Twitter for business. We’ll walk you through the benefits of Twitter marketing, how to set up a business account and how to tweet your way to success.

Let’s get started.

Table of Contents

• Why should businesses use Twitter?
• How to create a business Twitter account
• How to use Twitter for business effectively

Why should businesses use Twitter?

Twitter is a hub of niche communities, real-time conversations and microblogging. For brands, the platform offers tons of opportunities to connect with audiences, build relationships and keep tabs on customer sentiment.

Below are several key benefits of using Twitter for business:

• Increase brand awareness: Share engaging content and join trending conversations on the platform to amplify your brand’s visibility and reach.
• Unlock valuable insights: Keep an eye on industry trends, brand sentiment, changing customer demands and more by monitoring and joining relevant conversations.
• Promote products and campaigns: Showcase your latest offerings and create buzzworthy campaigns on Twitter to capture your audience’s attention and drive conversions.
• Provide customer support: Quickly address inquiries and concerns in tweets or Direct Messages (DMs), leading to more satisfied customers and brand loyalty.
• Build relationships with industry influencers: Connect and collaborate with key influencers in your niche. Leverage their reach to expand your audience and make a bigger impact with your message.
• Effectively manage potential crises: Proactively address issues and communicate transparently with your audience to maintain your brand’s credibility and trustworthiness.

How to create a business Twitter account

Creating a Twitter for business account is straightforward.

Set up a Twitter profile and convert it into a Professional Account to access additional tools and features that would benefit businesses.

Once you’ve created a Twitter Professional Account signed up and verified your contact information, follow the steps below to set up your profile:

• Upload a profile photo: Add a high-quality photo to visually represent your brand on the platform. This should ideally be your company logo. Ensure your profile photo has the right dimensions and fits well in a small, circular space.
• Add a header image: This image goes at the top of your Twitter profile like a banner or billboard. Update your header image to reflect upcoming events, promotions, hiring announcements and more. Choose a photo that aligns with your brand’s current vibe.
• Add a display name and @name: Your @name is a unique name that represents your Twitter profile across the platform. It’s what people can use to tag and respond to you. To make it easy, keep your @name as identical as possible across all social profiles. The display name appears at the top of your @name on your profile and should ideally be the full name of your business or brand.
• Customize your bio: Write a short-and-sweet Twitter bio to describe your brand, core value or offering. Don’t forget to include your website and location to help potential customers get in touch. If you have a physical store, you can also include your open hours.
• Pin a tweet: This is the Tweet users will see pinned at the top of your feed. If you’re a new business, you could pin a Tweet summarizing your key offerings. Or, pin tweets about upcoming product launches, events, sales and other big news.

That’s it! Your Twitter account is now set up and ready for you to start engaging with your audience. Head to More → Twitter for Professionals to convert your profile into a business account.

Additionally, access advanced features like ads and monetization by navigating to More → Professional Tools from the left-hand sidebar.

How to use Twitter for business effectively

Just like any other platform, you need to be strategic when using Twitter to maximize results and attract the right users. Below are some tips for using Twitter for business more effectively.

Refine your Twitter marketing strategy

Taking a strategic approach on Twitter gives direction to your marketing efforts and boosts your chances of seeing success on the platform.

Here are several actions you can take to start on the right foot:

• Set clear goals: Goal-setting lets you pick the right tactics and allocate resources like budget, staff and time. It also helps you focus on relevant metrics to measure progress. For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, success to you might mean a 50% increase in impressions and retweets over the next three months.
• Identify your target audience: Conduct audience research to identify their demographics, interests, pain points and habits. For example, if you own a fitness brand, your target audience might be young professionals interested in health and wellness. Use this information to create tailored content they resonate with.
• Research the competition: Study your competitors’ Twitter presence and analyze their strengths, weaknesses and tactics. This can help you uncover opportunities and avoid making the same mistakes. For instance, if you notice that a competitor’s video content receives high engagement, consider incorporating more video content into your own strategy.
• Focus on what makes your brand unique: Emphasize your brand’s value props to differentiate yourself from competitors and build a strong brand identity. For example, if your eco-friendly clothing brand uses sustainable materials and donates a portion of profits to environmental causes, highlight this in your Twitter content.

Create valuable content

Share carefully crafted content on Twitter that delivers actual value to users — whether that’s entertainment, education or advertisement. This helps you build authority in your niche, attract new followers and retain existing ones.

If you’re looking to add variety to your Twitter marketing efforts, you can encourage and share user-generated content. In fact, retweeting content from customers like reviews, mentions and photos with your products can help you build community and connect with your followers.

Experiment with different types of tweets, such as informative, humorous and promotional ones. If you’re a SaaS company, for example, you can share industry news, helpful tips, customer stories and product updates on Twitter.

Also, did you know tweets with videos get 10x more engagement than those without? Use visuals like infographics, photos, GIFs and videos into your Tweets to spark conversation and make your content more impactful.

Engage with and grow your followers

Building a strong connection with your audience is key to growing your Twitter presence. Consistently engage with current and potential followers in your network to attract the right audiences.

Of course, this involves responding to comments, mentions and direct messages (DMs) timely. But to make an impact, proactively join conversations that are relevant to your industry.

Participate in Twitter chats, join or even host Twitter Spaces and run polls. Encourage followers to interact with your tweets by asking thoughtful questions and sharing relatable content. Ask people about their opinions and experiences to motivate them to respond.

Also, offer valuable insights and answer questions when you can. For example, if you recently published a research report, share some findings on relevant Twitter threads or create a series of Tweets promoting the report. All of this helps put your brand in the spotlight, grows your network and builds credibility.

Use trending hashtags

Using popular hashtags in your tweets can accelerate your visibility and help you reach new audiences. Hashtags make your content can appear in broader conversations, exposing your brand to users who might not have found you otherwise.

Use hashtags naturally in place of certain words so your Tweets can appear when users search for related topics. Here’s how we do it at Sprout Social.

Now, how do you find the right hashtags for your brand?

Start with Twitter’s native Explore page to find trending hashtags in your location. Scroll down to view “What’s happening” and popular posts related to specific industries and topics in your network.

Another way to find trending hashtags to capitalize on is to use a social listening or hashtag research tool. Sprout Social’s Listening feature, for example, lets you monitor conversations related to your brand and identify relevant keywords.

Finally, keep an eye out for general trending topics or viral challenges that align with your brand values. Participating in trends showcases your brand’s personality and helps you connect with users on a more personal level.

A word of caution — avoid overusing hashtags. Research suggests using more than two hashtags per tweet can lead to a drop in engagement. So, be selective and focus on the most impactful and relevant hashtags to maximize your reach.

Reuse & repurpose your content

Make the most out of your existing content by sharing it in fresh, new formats.

Repurposing content helps keep your Twitter feed active and engaging — even if you have a publishing calendar full of ideas. It also lets you attract a wider audience and save time and money while you’re at it.

Here are some ways to reuse and repurpose content on Twitter:

• Turn blog posts into infographics or short videos: Transform key takeaways from your blog articles into visually appealing infographics or brief video summaries. This not only increases the lifespan of your content but also caters to followers who prefer visual or audio content over text.

• Reshare evergreen content: Identify timeless Tweets or blog posts that remain relevant over time, such as how-to guides or industry best practices. Share these posts periodically to ensure new followers don’t miss out on valuable insights.
• Create Twitter threads from long-form content: Break down articles, white papers or case studies into a series of Tweets, or a Twitter thread. This will make it easier for followers to digest complex information and encourage engagement.

• Highlight customer testimonials and success stories: Share positive reviews and excerpts from case studies as standalone tweets or in a visual format, like quote cards or short video clips.
• Convert data into visuals: If you have original data or research, transform it into attention-grabbing charts, graphs or other visual formats to make it more shareable and engaging.

Use social monitoring to understand brand sentiment

Social monitoring is tracking what people are saying about you (or someone else) online. It’s a great way to understand how customers feel about your brand and your competitors.

Social monitoring also helps improve your content sourcing, one of the most time consuming parts of social media management. Learn how to use Twitter advanced search to set up parameters for your brand that will help you stay on top of even indirect mentions of your business.

Alternatively, leverage social listening tools like Sprout to track mentions, analyze consumer sentiment and identify trends.

Our Listening feature comes in handy here for searching across multiple networks. Enter brand keywords and common search terms associated with your brand and the messages will display right along with any @mentions. So even if someone doesn’t mention your brand by name or misspells it, you’ll still be there to help them out.

Use this data to inform your content strategy, address customer concerns and uncover opportunities for engagement. Sprout’s listening features also enable you to monitor competitor performance and industry conversations.

Know when and how often to Tweet

To maximize engagement, tweet during peak times when your audience is most active.

The best times to post on Twitter would naturally vary from business to business, but we found in our research the ideal times to post on Twitter are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Here’s a snapshot of the averages we found in our research for peak engagement times:

Additionally, consider how often you want to post. You don’t want to drive followers away by constantly posting around the clock. Test and find the optimal posting frequency that helps you stay on top of users’ minds without cannibalizing their entire feed.

Use Sprout’s social scheduling to always post at just the right time — even if your audience is in a different time zone. Scheduling posts in advance helps you stick to a consistent posting schedule, even during weekends or holidays. Sprout’s Optimal Send Times feature uses machine learning technology based on your account’s data to suggest and schedule Tweets at the most opportune times.

Use Twitter features to connect and engage

Twitter offers several features to help businesses reach their audience in unique ways. You don’t need to use every single feature, but it’s worth experimenting with a few of them to create a more dynamic presence on the platform.

Here are some Twitter features businesses can take advantage of:

• Twitter Spaces: Host live audio conversations with your followers and industry experts. This feature allows you to discuss relevant topics, share insights and answer questions from your audience in real-time.
• Twitter Lists: Organize your feed and keep track of influencers, customers and competitors by creating and subscribing to Lists. This tool can help you monitor industry trends, curate content and find potential collaboration opportunities.
• Polls: Create Twitter polls to gather feedback, opinions or preferences from your followers. Polls can be an effective way to involve your audience in decision-making, generate buzz around upcoming campaigns or simply spark engagement.

• Livestream: Share live videos using Twitter’s built-in livestreaming feature to showcase product demos, behind-the-scenes footage or events. Livestreams can create a sense of urgency and exclusivity, encouraging followers to tune in and engage with your content.
• Twitter Communities: Join or create Twitter Communities that focus on topics related to your industry. These groups provide a platform for like-minded individuals to connect, share ideas and discuss relevant issues, allowing you to build relationships and establish your brand as a thought leader.

By incorporating some of these features into your Twitter strategy, you can create a more engaging and interactive experience for your followers.

Remember to choose the features that best align with your brand and objectives. Be open to adapting your approach based on your audience’s preferences and feedback.

Promote your content with Twitter ads

Did you know people spend 26% more time viewing ads on Twitter than on any other platform?

Using Twitter ads alongside your organic strategy can help you reach a wider audience. Here are some tips for maximizing your ad campaigns on the platform:

• Choose the right ad format: Using 3-5 different ad formats can help drive campaign awareness and purchase intent. Select the best ad formats, such as Promoted Tweets or Promoted Accounts, to align with your specific marketing goals and objectives.
• Define your target audience: Utilize Twitter’s advanced targeting options to ensure your ads reach the most relevant and interested users.
• Create compelling ad creatives: Craft engaging visuals paired with concise messaging and enticing calls-to-action (CTAs) to capture attention and encourage action.
• Set a budget and bid strategy: Establish a campaign budget and choose an appropriate bidding strategy based on your goals, such as cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-engagement (CPE).
• Test and optimize: Continuously analyze and refine your ad variations, targeting options and bidding strategies to maximize the effectiveness and return on investment (ROI) of your campaigns.

Tap into Twitter analytics

Monitor your Twitter performance using the platform’s built-in analytics tools. Here are some key metrics to keep an eye on:

• Impressions: Measure the number of times your tweet has been viewed by users.
• Engagements: Track the total number of interactions with your tweet, including likes, replies, and retweets.
• Engagement rate: Calculate the percentage of users who interact with your tweet compared to those who viewed it.
• Click-through rate (CTR): Assess the proportion of users who click on a link in your tweet.
• Follower growth: Monitor the increase or decrease in your total number of followers over time.
• Top tweets: Identify your most successful tweets based on engagement and impressions.
• Audience demographics: Understand the age, gender, location and interests of your followers.
• Hashtag performance: Evaluate the effectiveness of the hashtags you use in your tweets.

Use these insights to refine your content strategy, identify trends and optimize your Twitter marketing efforts for better results.

If you want to go deeper, use a social media management platform that includes Twitter analytics on a post-performance level like Sprout.

Sprout lets you access all your important metrics from a single dashboard. Additionally, keep tabs on follower sentiment, trending topics and hashtags, audience behavior and more.

Grow your business with Twitter

Using Twitter for business can help you participate in larger conversations in your industry, establishing your brand’s credibility and authority.

Build a solid Twitter marketing strategy with clear goals, valuable content, trending hashtags and more. Use features like paid ads, Spaces, livestreams, social listening and analytics to amplify your impact on Twitter and attract the right audience.

Want to learn more about how to deliver extraordinary customer experiences on the platform? Check out our guide to using Twitter for customer service.

Use of Twitter nomenclature across Sprout refers to newly rebranded X platform and related terminology.

The post The ultimate guide to Twitter for business appeared first on Sprout Social.

Not sure how to get started? Look no further because this post gives you a complete guide to Twitter advertising. Here, you’ll find out all about the different Twitter social media ad formats, how much you can expect to spend and how to set it up for the first time. Let’s get right to it.

Table of contents:

• Why use Twitter ads?
• Types of Twitter ads
• How much do Twitter ads cost
• How to set up a Twitter ad campaign
• Tips for using Twitter ads

Why use Twitter ads?

Now before you start investing in paid social for Twitter, you may want to know what’s in it for you. The platform has a lot of potential with improved targeting capabilities and new ad formats. As such, advertising on the platform could exponentially grow your reach. So let’s find out some of the top benefits of running ads on Twitter.

1. Potential to reach millions of users

According to the latest Twitter stats, the platform currently has 436 million monthly active users. Out of these, 237.8 million monetizable users use the app on a daily basis. That’s millions of people you could potentially reach through your Twitter advertising efforts.

2. Objective-based ad campaigns

Twitter lets you optimize your ads toward your campaign objective. You get to choose from a variety of campaign objectives and Twitter will only bill you for actions that align with your chosen objective. In other words, your investment specifically goes towards achieving your goals.

3. Robust targeting capabilities

The Twitter ads manager offers a number of campaign targeting options. This allows you to fine-tune your ad targeting to reach only the most relevant users. At the most basic level, you can use demographics targeting to reach users based on:

• Geolocation
• Age
• Gender
• Language
• Device
• Carrier

For more advanced targeting, you can choose to display your ads to users based on:

• Conversations they participate in
• Events relevant to your audience
• Keywords they use
• Whether they’ve engaged with a specific Tweet from your brand
• The movies and TV shows they watch
• What their interests are
• Whether they share similar interests with your existing followers

Twitter even lets you create unique audience segments using off-platform customer information. The Custom Audiences feature allows you to create different audience groups to target, exclude or expand to.

4. Rise in Twitter ad engagement

Ad engagement on Twitter is growing. This speaks volumes about the impact of advertising on the platform. According to the latest reports, Twitter saw a 7% year-over-year increase in ad engagement in Q2 of 2022. If these trends continue, you can expect to launch ad campaigns that drive tons of engagement.

Types of Twitter ads

Twitter offers several choices in ad types. To run a successful advertising campaign on the platform, you need to decide which Twitter ad format will help you achieve your goals.

Promoted Ads

You might remember these as Promoted Tweets. They’re a lot like regular Tweets, except Twitter shows them to people who aren’t following your brand yet. They have a “Promoted” label at the bottom so users can differentiate them from organic Tweets.

The best part is that you can use a variety of media formats to create these Promoted Ads. In addition to regular text and image Tweets, you can create ads using videos, carousels and Moments.

Follower Ads

Previously called Promoted Accounts, Follower Ads let you promote an entire Twitter account. It helps you target users who might be interested in your brand but aren’t already following you. So it’s the perfect ad type if you want to grow your Twitter following.

With this type of Twitter ad, your account will show up in the “Who to follow” section of a user’s feed.

Twitter Amplify

With this option, brands can serve their ads through video content from highly relevant publishers. There are two ad formats to choose from:

• Amplify Pre-roll, which lets you choose from 15+ categories of videos to serve your pre-roll video ad
• Amplify Sponsorships, which involves a one-on-one partnership with one specific publisher. Note that this option is currently not available for self-serve advertisers.

Twitter Takeover

These types of ads put your brand at the forefront with exclusive ownership of the platform’s premium real estate. As you can guess, they’re a lot more expensive than other Twitter ad formats. You can choose from two Takeover placements:

• Timeline Takeover, which ensures that your ad is the first one that someone sees when they open Twitter for the day
• Trend Takeover, which serves your ad alongside trending topics. Your ad will show up among topics in the Explore tab to drive conversations. Or you can even choose Trend Takeover+ for an immersive video experience.

Dynamic Product Ads (DPA)

These ads allow you to showcase your most relevant products to the right customers. With DPA Prospecting, you can acquire new customers by featuring products that are most relevant to them. Meanwhile, DPA Retargeting lets you feature products that people have engaged with on your website.

Collection Ads

As the name suggests, this type of ad lets you showcase a collection of product images in a single ad. Collection Ads feature a primary hero image on top of several small thumbnail images.

How much do Twitter ads cost

Fortunately for advertisers, the cost to run a Twitter ad campaign is customizable according to your budget. That means how much you spend largely depends on how much you’re willing to spend.

That said, it’s a good idea to get a sense of how much it typically costs to advertise on the platform. According to AdsTarget, you can expect to spend around $0.38 per action. However, the actual cost depends on the ad type. Here’s a quick look at the average cost to run different types of Twitter ads:

• Promoted Ads – $0.25 to $2 per action
• Follower Ads – $2 to $4 per follow
• Twitter Takeover – $200,000 per day

Keep in mind that Twitter charges you based on actions relevant to your ad objective. This makes it much easier to stick to your budget because you’re not paying for actions that don’t align with your goal. Check out the different billable actions for each objective:

• Reach – Cost per 1,000 Tweet impressions
• Video views – Cost per view
• Pre-roll views – Cost per view
• App installs – Impressions or app clicks
• Website traffic – Cost per engagement
• Engagements – Cost per engagement
• Followers – Cost per follow
• App re-engagements – Cost per app click

How to set up a Twitter ad campaign

If you’re familiar with setting up Facebook ads, you should have no trouble launching a Twitter ad campaign. But if you’re completely new to the scene, we’ve got you covered.

Before you start, make sure you set up your Twitter ads account. For this, sign in to your Twitter account and go to the Twitter ads onboarding page. Then follow the steps to complete setting up your account.

Next, follow the steps below to create your Twitter ad campaign.

1. Choose your ad objective

What do you want to get out of your ads? Depending on your ad objective, Twitter will offer the best engagement types and actions for your campaign.

Choose from the following available ad objectives:

• Reach – This objective displays your ad to as many people as possible within a set timeframe. And you only pay for every 1,000 Tweet impressions. Use this to raise brand awareness and improve brand perception.
• Engagements – Drive more conversations around your brand by designing ads that people would want to interact with.
• Followers – Promote your Twitter account and attract more followers.
• Website traffic – Get more people to visit your website after seeing your ad. This type of campaign leverages Twitter’s Click ID to give you a reliable way to measure visits coming from your Twitter ad.
• Keywords – Target users who use specific keywords relevant to your campaign. This is an effective way to narrow down an audience with high intent.

2. Create your ad

The next page lets you create your ad by adding text and relevant media. Twitter gives you the option to upload a new media file or choose from your existing media library. You’ll need to include a headline and a link to your desired landing page.

On the right-hand panel, you get a preview of what the ad would look like. Use this as a guide to fine-tune your ad design.

3. Customize your ad delivery

The next step is where you decide whom to target. First, select the key audience demographics you want to reach with this ad. You can narrow your targeting down based on gender, age and location.

Optionally, Twitter offers several targeting features to fine-tune your ad delivery. You can target users based on the keywords and devices they use and their interests and languages. It even lets you target people who follow accounts similar to yours.

4. Set your budget and schedule

Next, it’s time to decide how much you’re willing to spend on your campaign. When you set a daily budget, it gives you better control over your spend. That way, Twitter will stop displaying your ad once you’ve reached the budget limit.

Additionally, make sure to include a date range for your ad. This will ensure that your ad only runs for the specified time frame.

Finally, add a credit card to your Twitter ad account. Then once you’ve finalized everything, hit the “Launch campaign” button to go live with your ad.

Tips for using Twitter ads

Want to get more out of your Twitter ads? Follow these best practices and examples from top brands.

1. Stick to your brand voice

To make sure your ads resonate with your target audience, maintain a consistent brand voice. Your promoted content should be no different from your organic ones in terms of how you speak.

2. Write short and engaging copy

Twitter users quickly move on from one Tweet to the next. So stay far away from huge text blocks. Make sure your copy is short and to the point. Just because there’s room for 280 characters doesn’t mean you have to use up all that space.

If it fits with your brand personality and you don’t overdo it, consider using some emojis to catch attention. But don’t forget about accessibility considerations for those using screen readers. Your copy should be short enough to keep users engaged but not so short that it’s meaningless.

German Doner Kebab strikes the perfect balance with creative ad copy that cuts right to the chase. The brand keeps it fun and casual with a sprinkle of emojis to connect with the audience.

3. Use high-quality visuals

Eye-catching videos and images can make your ad stand out and stop the scroll, driving more engagement with your ad. They can get people to pause and engage with your ad. So be sure to use high-quality visuals that speak for the quality of your products/services.

4. Have a clear call to action

Let people know exactly what you want them to do after seeing your ad. Whether it’s to visit your website or download your app, your ads should have a CTA that clearly mentions the next step.

The following ad from Greyson comes with a CTA that explicitly tells the audience what to do. In this case, it’s to shop Justin Thomas’ championship looks.

5. Learn from your organic performance

How people respond to your organic Tweets can tell you a lot about how to run your Twitter ads. Find out what kind of content gets the most engagement and positive sentiment from your target audience. Then use the insights from your Twitter analytics to inform your advertising decisions.

Sprout Social offers Twitter analytics and reporting to help you with this. This lets you identify your best Twitter content based on reach, clicks and retweets.

6. Test and optimize

Of course, the best way to make sure your ads are working is to test them. Run A/B tests on different ad placements, messaging, ad format and post timings. Then use those data and insights to create highly optimized ads that will rake in profits.

Ready to hit the ground running with Twitter ads?

With stronger attribution and better targeting, Twitter is constantly evolving to serve brands. And with the right strategy, it can be a valuable advertising channel for your business. But the fast-paced nature of the platform means you have to perfect your timing to reach your audience when they’re most active. Check out our guide on how to schedule Tweets to get your timing right.

Use of Twitter nomenclature across Sprout refers to newly rebranded X platform and related terminology.

The post Twitter ads: The complete guide for your brand appeared first on Sprout Social.