Alright small businesses, if you've ever wanted to get your hands on those promoted tweets and promoted accounts on Twitter, now's your chance. Twitter has started rolling out its self-serve ads platform that would allow small businesses to grab a piece of Twitter's massive advertising potential.

The roll-out started at the end of March, with only a handful of select small businesses getting to join the fun. This week though, a lot of our small biz friends have informed us that Twitter started reaching out them to try out the ad platform.

Partnership with American Express

Twitter invites small businesses to check out their self-serve ad solution in partnership with American Express. Twitter users who also happen to be AmEx card holders are given the chance to receive $100 worth of free Twitter advertisements.

You can sign up here, and wait for an invite from Twitter. Hurry though, as this opportunity will only be provided to the first 10,000 eligible Cardmembers and merchants that register. How would you know if you're eligible? According to the promotion's terms, the opportunity "is open to American Express Cardmembers and merchants who use Twitter to tweet business news and updates to their followers and who actively engage with and respond to other Twitter users through Mentions, Retweets, and Replies." Also note that the program is only open to new advertisers (meaning those that never advertised with Twitter before) with a billing address in United States.

Promoted Tweets

Want your most engaging and interesting tweets to reach more people? Then Promoted Tweets is for you. With this solution, Twitter will take your most successful and interactive tweets and promote them to relevant users and searches. This process is automated, and Twitter will only choose to promote posts that are doing well. You can however, mark tweets that you don't want to promote. Promoted tweets are best used if you wish to spread the word about your business. This solution is perfect if you want to publicize an event, product, sale, or promotion that you're having.

Promoted Accounts

If your purpose is to gain more followers, then you should try Promoted Accounts. Here, Twitter will examine your followers and promote your account to similar people. Promoted Accounts will appear in the "Who to Follow" section of Twitter.

Targeted

If you're a local business, you'll be pleased to know that Twitter lets you to target your ads based on location, to ensure that only people in certain geographical areas will see your ads and you won't waste money on irrelevant users. Twitter ads are also available on mobile devices, which means that you'll be able to reach people even when they're out and about.

Budget-Friendly

The great thing about Twitter's ad platform for small businesses is that advertisers can spend as little to as much as they want. You'll be able to set limit to how much you can spend in a day, and you can stop the campaigns at any time. Additionally, you'll only pay for results. Twitter will only charge you for actual followers and interactions (i.e. Retweets, Replies, Favorites).