In the meantime….

(Source: icanhascheezburger.com)

First of all, we pay our Twitter Publishers through PayPal. If you don’t already have a PayPal account set-up then visit http://paypal.com right now and get that done. You may not need it today but you will eventually. Go ahead…we’ll wait for you!

OK, now that you’ve got your PayPal all taken care of, let’s move on to your Sponsored Tweets account. Sign-in to your account using you Twitter handle (we do not store this information; we connect with the Twitter API*.) Once you’ve successfully signed-in, in the top righthand of your account you should see a “Withdraw” button that looks like this (using my account as an example):

As you can see, I have $11.04 sitting in my account. “But I thought I had to have earned at least $50 before I could cash out?” you might be asking yourself. Well, that’s no longer true! About two weeks ago we started offering “early” cash-out, with a $2 fee attached. So now you can take money any time you want!

If you’re ready, go ahead and click on that “Withdraw” button, and you should then see a screen like this:

At this point, just fill-out all the requested information on this screen and the next…and you’re on your way!

The last screen you’ll see is the one confirming payment. Congrats! Now you’ve got some extra cash in your pocket: buy some ice cream, catch a Lady Gaga show, or put it away for that European trip you’ve been saving for!

Be sure to let us know if you have any questions about cashing-out. For other tips you can check-out our Support Forums.

* If you’re not familiar with what an API is, click here.

So…how do you get a larger audience? One of the best things to do is to market yourself, of course. “How do I do that?” you’re probably asking yourself?

Digital Marketing

Well, first of all you should let it be known you’re on Twitter in as many places as you can. This might be in your e-mail signature (even work, if allowed), on your blog (if you have one), any place you might be sending a message through the Internet. Maybe you even want to create a newsletter that you send family, friends, and colleagues. Get creative – the ideas are limitless!

Events

Another thing you can do is promote yourself offline. Yup, you’re gonna have to get out there and meet some folks…talk to them. Know of any Meetups or Tweetups in your area? Why not plan on attending one, and network with other people who are there? This is the perfect opportunity to connect with people who are active in the social media space, and to promote yourself and your Twitter handle. You might even have some business cards created, as an additional means for people to remember you after the event.

Engagement

Yet another way you can grow your audience, and this is the most time-consuming, is by connecting with other Tweeters who talk about the same things you do. Do you talk about entertainment alot in your Tweets? Movies? The hottest TV show? Your favorite actor? Then find other people who are talking about the same thing, and engage in conversation with them. One of the easiest ways of doing this is using a Twitter search engine. There are several you can choose from but one of my favorites is Search.Twitter.com. The site’s interface is clean and easy to use, and there are many different search options available to the user.

Twitter Search Homepage:

If you are a Tweeter who talks about movies often, and want to find out what other Tweeters are saying about the film “Inception,” for example, then you would type inception into the search field. You can also be very specific about keywords, locations (of the Tweeters), dates, and more by selecting the “Advanced” option at the top of the page.

Once you’re finished defining your query, hit the “Search” button and here’s what you’ll see:

Read over the Tweets being published, and if someone’s saying something interesting, or making a comment you want to respond to, simply hit the “reply” link and an “@” will open-up automatically in your Twitter profile. And BAM…you’re starting a dialogue!

Of course, if you have other areas of interest then you’ll want to do the same thing with those topics.

Success!

Once you start involving yourself in conversation with people who have like-minded interests, you’ll find yourself gaining more Followers in no time. Why? Because you’ll be developing authentic relationships…what social media is all about!

If you have any other great ideas about growing your Twitter audience, or have done things that’ve worked for you, we’d love to hear about it!

So I thought perhaps a short overview of the “keywords” feature might help Tweeters get better–and more–offers, and also clear-up any confusion there might be. I’ll provide my personal Sponsored Tweets profile as an example.

First, you want to sign-in to your account. NOTE: Once you sign-in, the “Opportunities” tab will be defaulted open, so click on the “My Account” tab to view the details of your account:

Once in the “My Account” tab, you should see something similar to this:

They keywords are in the very bottom field, highlighted in green. Obviously your keywords will look different than mine, because it’s highly likely you don’t Tweet about the same exact things I do. So, consider some of the topics you regularly Tweet about, and enter in those keywords to your profile. The numbers listed beside each keyword refer to the other Tweeters in the system who are using the same keyword(s).

You can only include 10 keywords, so think carefully about the subjects you talk about. And make sure these keywords are ones that are going to be relevant to your audience. I often talk about food, entertainment, Orlando, music, and humor (at least things I think are funny!), so my keywords reflect that.) Remember, the sponsored Tweets should be about things that are going to add value to your Followers. After all, you want them to be interested in your Tweets, and this will in-turn provide the most value to the Advertiser hiring you (and return for you, particularly if the Tweet is a Cost Per Click Opp).

I strongly urge you to sign-in to your Sponsored Tweets account as soon as you can, and make sure that you not only have keywords in place, but that the keywords are terms you regularly Tweet about and are relevant to both you and your audience. It could mean causing you to miss Opportunities if you don’t.

Once you have input keywords into your profile you’re increasing your chances of receiving Opportunities by far!

I hope this has been helpful! Please let us know if you have any questions.

Ryan Staver from Twitter’s API team made this comment:

“I want to make sure this part is clear — this policy change isn’t meant to say that we are going to start policing if the content of something a user tweets is an ad or not. The policy change affects 3rd party services that were putting ads in the middle of a timeline.

So if Liz is paid by Reebok to tweet about how much she loves their new shoes, we are not going to be policing that any more than we were on Friday. This policy also *does not prohibit* services - ( like Ad.ly and SponsoredTweets) - and that help facilitate those relationships or even help her post the ads to her timeline on her behalf.

It *does prohibit* an application from calling out to a service to find an ad to serve to Liz that will get inserted into the timeline she is viewing.

The language is somewhat nuanced but it sounds like we might need to make the policy more explicit as a number of people are misinterpreting it.”

What does this mean?

This means we will not have to change to a more manual process as I originally stated. I think this is a great move on Twitter’s part as it helps us maintain more control over the quality of the posts and makes disclosure enforcement more consistent.

While the process of doing a sponsored tweet is not going to change we are still embarking on a major curation process. We <3 the Twitter ecosystem and want to do our part to keep it as clean as possible.

Twitter has made a number of refinements to their advertising policy for 3rd parties like Sponosored Tweets over the past year. We have adjusted along with them, doing our best to comply with Twitter’s best practices.

You Own Your Tweets

Twitter maintains that they don’t seek to control what a user tweets. They also state that you own your tweets. There are no rules prohibiting people sharing sponsored or commercial messages, they just don’t want it automated through an API.

You can still tweet about our sponsors. You can still promote your employer. You can still drive traffic to your blog. You can still share amazon affiliate links. You can still use your account to tweet out deals. You still have freedom to do what you like with your Twitter account, so long as you aren’t a spammer.

So What Does This Mean?

No more direct publishing.

We are going to make some changes to the way Sponsored Tweets works. We will no longer be publishing directly to your account through the Twitter API. Instead you will have to write the tweet yourself in whatever Twitter client you see fit.

Yes, it will be a more manual process. Yes, we liked the old way better too. But we want to comply with Twitters guidelines and be a good ecosystem partner. We have always made adjustments to our system to remain in compliance. Twitter has allotted 30 days to make this change, we will try to get it out as soon as we can. Until then it is business as usual.

Curation.

In addition to the direct publishing change we are going to start curating our list more carefully with human account reviews and more automated tools. Most of you guys are solid tweeters, but there are also some people trying to take advantage of the system. These people will not be able to participate in future campaigns.

Our goal remains to provide you the best sponsored tweets platform out there. We will continue to refine our platform as the landscape changes.

Update: All done! Please let us know if you run into any issues!

We are taking SponsoredTweets down for a few minutes tonight as we update to v1.3. We apologize for the inconvenience, but to make up for it, have a read about the API we are releasing tonight!

We should be back online around 10:30pm est.

See you then

@dascgo