Twitter Offers A Total Of $1M In Free Credits To 10,000 New Advertisers For Small Business Saturday

In conjunction with Small Business Saturday (that’s November 24 this year), Twitter just announced a promotion to bring up to 10,000 new small businesses into its advertising program.

The company says that the first 10,000 eligible small businesses that apply for the program will receive up to $100 in credits that can be used to pay for Promoted Tweets or Promoted Accounts. In order to qualify, businesses must be based in the U.S. and already active on Twitter, but not yet an advertiser on the site.

This seems like a smart way to grow the company’s advertiser base, assuming that a significant portion of participating businesses are happy with their results and come back for more. Twitter actually ran a similar promotion when it first started rolling out its self-serve ad program in February, and since then, the company says, “thousands of U.S. business owners have used Twitter advertising to quickly gain new followers, reach new customers and drive more traffic.” (The February promotion was run in partnership with American Express, which also came up with Small Business Saturday and the Shop Small initiative.)

As examples of successful small business campaigns, Twitter points to a Promoted Tweet campaign from Brooklyn-based clothing store Alter, and to a Promoted Account from Philadelphia-based Whipped Bakeshop, which “reached hundreds of new, local customers in just a few weeks.”

You can read more details on the Twitter Advertising blog and the company’s Shop Small sign-up page.