Today, Twitter is announcing two new features to their self-service advertising platform for small businesses – one focuses on functionality and the other on analytics.

First, Twitter now lets businesses have more control over which tweets you promote. Before, they only had the option to automatically promote their newest, most engaging tweets. Now, Twitter has put the decision in their hands with a manual selection option.

From the Twitter Advertising blog:

Many advertisers have requested more control over which Tweets are promoted in order to be able to market a specific product, promotion or event. That’s why we’re now offering manual selection of Tweets in addition to automatic selection of your most engaging Tweets. If you choose the manual option, you can select a few Tweets for promotion or even tweet from within the interface. Remember to add new Tweets every couple of days to keep users engaged with fresh content.

That’s a pretty good update for small businesses. It allows for more precise targeting of products, exactly when the marketer wants it.

The second new feature is promoted account reporting. Part of Twitter’s self-service advertising platform allows for the promotion of entire accounts in order for businesses to get their names out there. Now, they can see exactly how it’s working. The new chart will track paid and unpaid followers side by side: