Mobile is at the core of Twitter’s DNA: more than 80% of our active users engage on the platform from their mobile device.

Over the past year, we’ve rolled out a number of tools to help advertisers connect with our mobile audience, including targeting by mobile operating system, specific device and WiFi connectivity. Today, we’re releasing two additions: the ability to target by mobile carrier, and the ability to target users with new mobile devices. Now advertisers will be able to reach the right audience on Twitter even more precisely and efficiently.

Mobile carrier targeting
You can now reach users based on their mobile carrier. A number of advertiser categories can make use of this targeting type in different ways. For example:

• Mobile carriers. If you’re a mobile carrier, you can easily create a loyalty campaign on Twitter by targeting only your customers, and excluding those using other carriers. You can also create an effective customer acquisition campaign by targeting all users except those who already subscribe to your service.
• Mobile manufacturers and app marketers. These marketers can create custom content tailored to people based on their carrier to drive improved performance.
• Other verticals. Advertisers across verticals can create carrier-targeted campaigns that align with their preferred demographic. For example, a CPG brand that knows that users of a certain carrier are more likely to be interested in their product can target those users exclusively to optimize campaign efficiency.

Target users with new mobile devices
Using new mobile device targeting, you can target (or exclude) people who have recently used Twitter on a new mobile device or carrier. This feature is ideal for mobile app marketers who want to reach those who are looking for apps to install on their new device. You can target those who have used Twitter on a new device within a certain period of time. And, you can combine new mobile device targeting with any other targeting type, such as keyword, interest or mobile operating system. For instance:

• A mobile app advertiser in the fashion vertical can layer new mobile device targeting with fashion interest targeting to encourage app installs.
• A mobile carrier can combine carrier targeting with new mobile device targeting to reach customers who have recently activated a new device and are on their network with an upsell campaign.

Since we first began testing this, we’ve gotten positive feedback from brands about how these new targeting features help them create more efficient campaigns:

For instance, @TMobile used carrier targeting to tailor their Promoted Tweets to new and existing customers. Peter DeLuca, T-Mobile’s senior vice president of brand and advertising, explains:

“Twitter is blazing a new trail in the social space with this type of targeting and our early results are very positive,” DeLuca explained. “More importantly, it’s really helped us extend our Un-Carrier approach of directly speaking to existing and potential customers – and we plan on continuing to refine and expand those efforts.”

Mobile payments app @GoSoftcard drove installs of the different versions of their app designed for several carriers. Jeffrey Mack, head of social media, reports that carrier targeting helped them overcome major hurdles:

“Softcard has a unique challenge in that we have three separate versions of our app, which are all mobile carrier-specific,” Mack began. “Our biggest challenge in the past was effectively running digital acquisition campaigns where we could push a new user to the correct version of the app. With carrier targeting on Twitter we’ve been able to overcome that challenge in a big way.”

Canada’s largest carrier @RogersBuzz used carrier targeting to connect directly with their customers on Twitter. Chief Brand Officer Dale Hooper tells us:

“With carrier targeting, we’ve been able to speak to our customers in a more meaningful way when travel and purchase decisions are top of mind for them, while also ensuring the media spend is efficient. This campaign marks one of the biggest investments we’ve made in Twitter to date, and the results so far are great; exceeding the telecom threshold by 10% in English Canada, and 30% in French Canada.”

Get started
Mobile carrier targeting and device targeting are now available in 35 countries, and will be rolling out to our Ads API partners shortly. To get started or to learn more, visit ads.twitter.com and the Help Center.

If you want to hear what I have to say in 140 characters or less, please follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/erikpenn.

1. Use mobile-friendly landing pages

Your PPC campaigns should be sending mobile traffic to dedicated, mobile-friendly landing pages.

Though this one may sound obvious to a seasoned PPC marketer, Brian Rotsztein, head of boutique online marketing agency Uniseo, sees people making this mistake again and again:

“The single biggest mistake companies make is that they set up a PPC account for search engine users to find their products and services, then lead them to desktop versions of their landing pages. This makes no sense. It’s such a waste of money yet I see companies doing that every single day. If you want to get the most out of your mobile/responsive PPC campaign, make sure your landing pages are mobile-friendly.”

Takeaways for your PPC campaigns:

Okay, so you understand the importance of mobile-friendly landing pages for your PPC campaigns – but how do you get started? Here are a couple of optimization tips from the pros:

• Brad Geddes: “Make sure that all phone numbers are hyperlinked to the phone number so its one click to load the phone dialer.”
• Johnathan Dane: “With mobile forms, make sure your different input fields automatically switch the mobile keyboards to alphabetical vs numeric depending on if it’s name (alphabetical), phone (numerical), email (alphabetical), zip code (numerical), etc.”

2. Focus on short tail keywords

Your mobile users are all thumbs – literally.

Because it’s not easy for them to type in long search queries, they’re likely searching for for shorter keywords – and Johnathan Dane, President and Co-Founder of Disruptive Advertising explains that you should adapt your PPC campaigns accordingly:

“People type in more short tail keywords compared to long tail on mobile.

This comes back to quickness and speed, so make sure your headlines are short and to the point and that your loading time is fast as lightning.”

Takeaways for your PPC campaigns:

• For your mobile PPC campaigns, focus on short tail keywords.
• Mobile users may have slower internet connections, so make sure your landing pages load quickly.

3. Be as clear and concise as possible

With slower internet connections and limited typing capability, Johnathan explained that your users’ attention spans are as short as their keywords:

“People have even less of an attention span on mobile compared to desktop. This means that you need to get to the point as soon as possible with your landing pages – be clear instead of clever and reduce as much text as you can.”

In order to adapt to this short attention span, Alhan Keser, Senior Conversion Strategist at WiderFunnel, explained that you need to start by understanding your mobile users’ goals:

“Smartphone visitors are much more single goal oriented. If you’re trying to persuade them to take an action unrelated to why they came to the page in the first place, good luck: you’ll need to get creative.”

For Alhan, optimizing your PPC campaigns for mobile users is all about understanding their goals – and then demonstrating that they can be completed quickly and easily:

“Considering the mobile context in which a page is being seen, we’ve successfully tested language that is in line with the visitors mindset: this will be quick, easy, and you can do it via your device.

We have not seen a mobile-specific test where cutting down the amount of content in favor of more concise, well-worded copy did not help.”

Takeaways for your PPC campaigns:

• Get right to the point. Your ad and landing page copy should be clear – not clever.
• Use language that reassures visitors that completing the desired action will be quick and easy to complete on their device.

4. Run mobile ad campaigns during business hours

When interacting with your landing page, your mobile users behave differently than your desktop users; Avtar Ram Singh, Digital Marketing Manager at Circus Social, explained that they’re more likely to phone in:

“Something fairly obvious that jumped out at us was that we received a ton of phone calls from people that were browsing our page on their mobile phones. They’d access the landing page, go through the information, see our phone number, and call us.”

40% of our enquiries came from direct phone calls and about 80-85% of those converted into meetings. Once we saw this, we started running the ad campaigns on mobile during times that we were available in the office so that in the event anyone decided to call – we’d be around. We stopped ad campaigns before 10 AM and after 6 PM and limited them to weekdays. “

Takeaways for your PPC campaigns:

• Your mobile users are more likely to call you; optimize your mobile landing pages by including your phone number.
• Only drive traffic to your mobile ad campaigns when someone is available to pick up the phone. Run bid adjustments to cut off traffic to your landing page overnight and on weekends.

5. Find ways to reduce typing

Everything on your mobile landing pages – including your opt-in forms – should be concise. Josh Krafchin, founder of Clever Zebo, explained why:
“There are a lot of people still using old devices: iPhone 4S, non-smart phones, etc. Yes, the big cell phone creators do everything they can to boost sales by upgrade, but don’t underestimate how many older devices are out there. Where possible, we try to simplify so it’s easy to run on all devices, browsers, etc. In practice, though, we focus on the 80% use cases and do our best with the outliers.”

Josh explained that a large part of optimizing your campaigns for all mobile advices is to find ways to reduce typing:

“People are more likely to take an action if made easy. Finding ways to reduce typing can be crucial: e.g. social login instead of form fill out, integrating with payment solutions that already have payer information loaded, multi-select over free-form text.”

Takeaways for your PPC campaigns:

• On your campaign landing pages, include typing shortcuts such as social login and multi-select boxes instead of free-form text.
• Make sure your landing pages render properly on all devices – and don’t forget to test.

If you want to hear what I have to say in 140 characters or less, please follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/erikpenn.

Step 1: Fill out your basic business info

Open the following URL to create a business page on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

Once there, you’ll choose one of the following six categories for your page:

1. Local business or place
2. Company, organization, or institution
3. Brand or product
4. Artist, band, or public figure
5. Entertainment
6. Cause or community

Keep in mind that you can change the category and name later on if needed.

Also, at this stage, it might be helpful to know that a physical address figures prominently in the setup of a local business or place, and the actual Facebook page will appear differently as well.

About your page – You get 155 characters to describe your page. This description appears prominently near the top of your Facebook page on both desktop and mobile. Be as descriptive and helpful as possible.

URL – The web address for your store, company, or brand.

Facebook URL / username – You may have the option to choose a custom vanity URL for your page, i.e. facebook.com/yourbrandname.

(In some cases, Facebook will ask that you reach 25 fans first before you can unlock a custom Facebook URL.)

Profile picture – Upload a main profile picture/icon for your page. This photo will appear as your icon every time you comment on a post or publish in a news feed. Square dimensions are best. Facebook will force rectangular photos to be cropped to squares.

Profile pictures should be at least 180 pixels wide by 180 pixels tall. Here is a full list of the sizes that Facebook uses for your profile picture in various places around the site:

• The main profile image on your page – 160 x 160
• In a news feed – 100 x 100
• In your timeline – 86 x 86
• Next to comments – 43 x 43

The final two steps in the setup process include adding your page to your main Facebook menu (so you can access it quickly and easy each time you log in) and setting up a Facebook ad to promote your new page. These options can be skipped for now.

Step 2: Create a cover image in a snap (no designer required!)

By this point your page is live for all the world to visit. Let’s see if we can make it look even snazzier.

First thing, add a cover photo. The cover photo appears across the top of your page and is a great opportunity to deliver a visual element that supports your branding, draws attention, or elicits emotion from your visitors.

The dimensions for your cover image should be a minimum of 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels tall. 

Step 3: Fill out your profile completely

Next, you can fill out your profile even more by adding information to your Page Info section. To access this section, click on Settings in the top menu bar on your page, then click Page Info.

Your name and category will be filled in already. Some of the most helpful bits of information to add next might be:

Start Info – You can choose when your company or product was founded, created, started, or launched. This information will appear on the history timeline to the right of your page’s feed and as an update at the very bottom of your main feed.

Address – Enter this if you want people to be able to check in via Facebook when they’re near your place.

Long description & Mission – Add additional details that explain your business or brand even further. This is a great way to go beyond the 155 character description that appears on the main page.

Phone number / Email address – Add additional contact information.

Step 4: Add collaborators to your page

If you plan on sharing your Facebook marketing duties with a team, you’ll want to grant access for various folks and various roles.

Here are the roles that you can choose from:

Admin – Complete and total access to everything (you are an admin by default)

Editor – Can edit the Page, send messages and post as the Page, create ads, see which admin created a post or comment, and view insights.

Moderator – Can respond to and delete comments on the Page, send messages as the Page, see which admin created a post or comment, create ads, and view insights.

Advertiser – Can see which admin created a post or comment, create ads and view insights.

Analyst – Can see which admin created a post or comment and view insights.

To add collaborators, go to your page settings and the “Page Roles” section. You can type in the name of any Facebook friend or person who has liked your page. Alternately, you can type in an email address associated with a Facebook account.

Step 5: Publish your first post

Add content to your page by publishing a post—a status update, a link, a photo, a video, an event, or a milestone. New, fresh content on your page will make it look all the more enticing once new visitors come over to check it out.

Keep in mind that visual content does exceedingly well on Facebook.

Facebook posts with photos receive 37 percent more engagement than those without photos.

What to post and when to post it

In general, there are three main types of posts you’re likely to publish on your Facebook feed:

• Photo/video
• Text update
• Links

As mentioned above, posts with photos garner 37 percent more engagement than posts without photos. 

Definitely make visual content a huge part of your Facebook strategy.

As far as the frequency with which to post, Facebook’s algorithm changes have made research into the topic rather difficult. The consensus seems to be to publish more often. An Edgerank Checker study posted on the Moz blog determined that one way to counteract algorithm changes might be to publish more frequently—as often as you have fresh, compelling content to share.

Even more tips – What would you recommend?

I came across so many great Facebook page tips while researching this article. I couldn’t fit them all in! Here are just a couple more that slipped through:

• Reply to all comments with either a response or a Like.
• Tag other people and pages—especially your community members—in your posts.
• Consider adding your first name as a signature to the posts you write.
• Repost the evergreen content from your blog, regardless of the original date of publication.

If you want to hear what I have to say in 140 characters or less, please follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/erikpenn.