So the biggest non-surprise of the social-media business occurred last week when Twitter finally introduced its advertising model, Promoted Tweets. We all knew that the company had to show some significant revenue model in 2010, and we all knew that it would work to “monetize its traffic” by, we guessed it, placing advertising in front of people’s searches and tweet stream. Now it’s time to address the unanswered question that our clients are already asking us: “Should I jump into Promoted Tweets?” My simple answer, “Yes, and…”

Promoted Tweets basically applies the Google AdWords model to Twitter. Brands buy keywords based on what Twitter users are saying and searching for in hopes of getting a positive brand impression, click to website, or retweet of the ad to friends and followers. A very basic example is the one above: Search for “Red Bull” (full disclosure: a Bridge Worldwide client) and the first result is a Promoted Tweet that the brand created. Twitter is slowly and cautiously rolling out the service—starting with a handful of A-list brands such as Starbucks and Best Buy, and only using it on search pages. But the company promises to add this to the regular stream of tweets users receive, both on Twitter.com and the many third-party applications that use the Twitter API.

So what is a marketer to do? Especially one that is still not sure what to do on Twitter to begin with? This is the question that kept me up all Friday night as I pondered this blog post and a Digital Alert that we will send to our clients next week. There is a simple answer and a complex answer.

The simple answer is that marketers should definitely experiment with Promoted Tweets. Once it opens up to more than the first handful of brands, Promoted Tweets will likely be very easy to set up by anyone on the brand team. Like Google or Facebook, a very small amount of money can be used to start testing results. (I’m talking about even a few hundred dollars.) For brands that are already buying Google or Facebook ads this is an opportunity to divert a tiny amount of that existing budget to send traffic to the same places and gauge click-through rates and cost-per-click among these three options. Easy enough, right?

But the complexity comes when a brand manager opens a Promoted Tweets account—as this simple step can open up a can worms. First, you have to start thinking about people who like your ads and want to follow your Twitter feed. Uh, oh—you don’t have a Twitter feed. And if you start one, who is going to monitor it? After all, people expect brands on Twitter to be there for them and truly interact. This is what makes Twitter a “social media” after all. So when they complain about your service or rave about your new product, what do you do? Suddenly your work got a lot harder, legal wants to review your tweets, and your customer service and PR people are coming to your desk. Maybe it’s not worth the effort after all…

Don’t panic.

The lesson here is that it is time for your brand to start playing with Twitter and engaging with consumers through this new but high-growth service. The real first step is to create a Twitter account on your own and spend a few minutes per day playing with the service. Then read Advertising Age or Brandweek and see how a handful of marketers are using the service in new ways. By personally diving into the space you will quickly have the smarts to deal with the right approach to engaging with consumers as well as your organizational hurdles.

You will discover as a new Twitter user and already-smart marketer that the interruptive advertising model represented by Promoted Tweets is interesting, but by far the least meaningful to your consumers. Promoted Tweets will work best if you are already “out there” with added value. Red Bull, for example, bought its brand name on Twitter so that it can highlight its killer content and existing high-quality Twitter account.

But there are many more meaningful ways to use Twitter to create marketing that people choose to engage with, and advertising that adds value to people’s lives. For example, here at Bridge Worldwide, we recently gave Healthy Choice coupon downloaders the chance to share a product review on Twitter. Subway is giving people a chance to win gift cards by tweeting about their favorite celebrity. Dell sold more than $6.5 million in product through its Dell Outlet Twitter feed. And Southwest Airlines uses its Twitter account to live and breathe the fun that its equity represents. The possibilities can vary widely based on your business goals, customer insight, and the creativity of your team. And although you will have to put in some work to understand this new medium and get your organization comfortable with it, Twitter is an incredibly cheap and potentially powerful tool.

Just as Twitter is evolving as a company by experimenting with an ad model, your company should be evolving its marketing by experimenting with Twitter.