Twitter added the capacity for users to limit who can reply to their tweets last August. And now, Twitter is extending the same to promoted tweets, that way brands can limit who is able to reply to their ads.

We’re making it easier for brands to control the conversations they start on Twitter.

Introducing Conversation Settings for Ads:

— Twitter Business (@TwitterBusiness) March 9, 2021

As shown above, now, within the Twitter ads creation flow, you’ll have the option to choose who can reply to your promoted tweet via a new dropdown menu.

Twitter’s New Option: 

As with Twitter’s regular conversation controls, advertisers will also be able to leave it as the default, which will mean that anyone can reply, or they’ll be able to select “People you follow” or “Only people you mention”, restricting who can respond.

The question is why might you want to limit who can respond to your promoted tweet?

Regarding Twitter’s new option, the main purpose for conversation controls in regular tweets is to stop trolls from commenting or to limit the conversation for, an example, an interview or more private discussion.

Moreover, those same reasons could apparently apply to promoted tweets – you could avoid possible critical replies by limiting who can respond, or you could definitely promote an interview stemming from your first promoted tweet by mentioning the interviewee and limiting who can respond.

More about Twitter’s new option can say that this could be a good way to add more context to a promotion – while there will also be different other ways in which brands will be able to prompt interaction besides engagement by limiting who can respond to their promotions.

Also, maybe you could offer a discount to specified Twitter handles mentioned in the tweet, or you could make a special offer to anyone who’s replies to the tweet – however, in order to reply, they’ll need to follow your handle (and you can then follow them back).

Twitter’s new option opens up a range of potential creative ideas, and it’ll be significant to see how brands look to utilize this capacity in their promoted tweets. For sure, the capability to limit replies has proven popular for regular users – Twitter says that since launch, 11 million people have applied conversation settings to 70 million conversations.

It could completely present some new opportunities. You can read more about Twitter’s audience controls for promoted tweets here.