What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you come across the term “Dark Post”?
Posts with dark background? Edgy content from the Gothic Victorian era? Spooky content brought from the depth of the dark web?
Sure, me too.
However, fortunately the reality is much plain and straightforward.
In the world of social media Dark Posts are targeted posts that are positioned differently than a normal promoted or sponsored post. They show up as sponsored content in the feeds of the users specifically targeted. It does not appear in your timeline and unless you target your followers it will not appear in their feed either.
Based on the social media platform on which they are published Dark post can take up a slightly different form. In this post we will gain some insights about the dark posts of twitter known as the ‘Dark Tweets’.
Where do Dark Tweets Appear?
Unlike other social media platforms Twitter has never admitted to labeling their invisible ads as ‘Dark Post’ or ‘Dark Tweet’. Twitter prefers to label it with a more upmarket term – ‘Promote-Only-Tweets’. Similar to Facebook’s unpublished page post, promoted-only tweets do not appear on your brand’s timeline. Instead, it is visible only to the targeted user in your ad campaign.
When the promoted-only tweet is shown to the targeted user, it will appear like a standard tweet except for the label beneath it stating “Promoted by (insert your brand here)”. Apart from this, the user can share, retweet, reply or like to it as if it were a regular, organic tweet. It is to be noted that even though the promoted-only tweets are effectively hidden, they still function as live tweets. This means when a user is mentioned in the tweet (e.g “Hey @JaneDoe”), a notification will be sent to the user stating that they were mentioned in the tweet along with a direct link to the tweet. In addition, these tweets are also visible to Twitter’s data partners, as they usually have access to all the live tweets for analysis purposes.
How can you create Dark Tweets?
Like All Promoted Ads on Twitter, promoted-only-tweets can be created and published from your Twitter Ads account. Within Twitter As they can be either created in the campaign creator or from the main Tweet composer in the "Creatives" > "Tweets" tab. As an owner of the account, you will get a choice beneath the delivery option to select or deselect the ‘Promoted-only’ tab. The tweet will be sent to all your followers as a regular organic tweet if you don’t click on the ‘Promoted-only’ tab.
On the other hand in case of campaign creation all the tweets are by default set to promoted-only. Also these tweets can be scheduled by specifying the exact date and time, when you wish it to published.
What are the Benefits of Dark Tweets?
With published or traditional twitter ads you can reach your target audience based on general features such as gender, age, areas of interest, etc. However, by the aid of dark tweets or promoted-only-tweets you will be able to target with a whole new level of precision. We all are aware that relevancy is one of the major factors in the success on social media. Appropriately targeted posts ensure that you are showing relatable content to the right person at the right time. This will further capture their attention and increase their potential to convert.
Another great benefit about dark tweets is that they don’t take away the spotlight from your organic content. No one likes to be surrounded by spammy ad posts especially if they have started following your brand recently. Hence, it is best to show relatable and informative content to your followers rather than spamming their timelines with irrelevant ad posts.
In most of the cases brands send dark tweets to influencers with considerable number of followers with the intention that they will interact with their tweet or share it on their timelines. By retweeting the posts, the influencer thereby increases the exposure of the post as now it will also visible to its followers.
The authenticity of Dark Tweets is still debatable in some circles as it doesn’t ensure transparency. With its precise targeting options sometimes it is tailored in such a manner that users may even find it creepy. Hence as a brand you should maintain certain legitimate boundaries while creating such posts.
Wrapping it up…
Dark Tweets has a number of additional advantages in comparison to the traditional twitter ad posts. It has aided many brands to successfully and effectively achieve their business goals.
Want to know whether Dark Tweet will be beneficial for your business or not? Contact Mad Result.
This article was written by,
Kulsum Shaikh - A knowledge geek and a client service and brand solutions associate.