Twitter made a major announcement last week with the news that it will be placing ads directly within user streams, meaning they will no longer be limited to displaying on the right-hand bar as “Promoted Trends” or in search results. They’ll be front-and-center.

The catch is that users will only see ads from brands they already follow. If you follow Starbucks, you’ll see ads for Starbucks. If you don’t follow JetBlue, you won’t see their ads.

In order to increase the reach of ads, brands will need to gain followers, perhaps through Twitter’s Promoted Accounts offering.

Still, brands need to retain those they already have through engaging content that their followers will share, potentially driving growth organically.

The Risk of Losing Meaning

The big takeaway from this development is if a brand isn’t engaging, meaningful and relevant, people can turn them off and effectively stifle not only their organic tweets but their paid placements as well.

The need to be meaningful has always been important for brands leveraging social media. If you’re not meaningful, no one will care enough to listen to what you have to say, let alone share it, which is the true power of this space.

Twitter’s new ad update makes being meaningful mandatory to even play the paid placement game.

Being Meaningful

Before brands could rely on paid placements to get in front of consumers, even if their content wasn’t all that great.

Whether it’s Twitter or any other platform, being meaningful is about connecting on the human level.

Connect with People Who Care: Trying to get someone to care about you will never pay off in this space. Go after those who are likely to care about what you have to say. Start to build relationships with them. Then evangelize them to get them spreading the word about your brand. Let them do the convincing for you, instead of wasting your time trying to gain followers who won’t care in the first place.
Share Meaningful Content: Know your audience and what they find interesting. Content can be original or from a third party. The point is to prove your business as a resource, and always make sure what you’re sharing is consistent with your brand and has purpose. Good content drives consumer reaction, and consumer reaction leads to organic growth.
Be Helpful: Don’t use social media and expect to maintain business as usual. Provide genuine help and prove to be a resource. Make thanking you irresistable.