Businesses eligible to access Twitter’s self-serve advertising platform will be notified by American Express today. Why is the notification coming from American Express and not Twitter? As we reported last month, the credit card company has landed an exclusive deal with Twitter – at least for the product’s initial rollout.

Twitter’s partnership with American Express offers 10,000 businesses the opportunity to reach new clients via promoted accounts and promoted tweets. Businesses have been eagerly awaiting this service offering since its first mention during Twitter’s December press conference – and with good reason. Promoted accounts come up in targeted “who you should follow” listings on Twitter and the promoted tweets functionality selects your best tweets and highlights them for followers. The video below shows each offering in action:

These services aren’t free, of course. Prices range from $2.50 to $4 for every follower associated with a promoted account, and $0.75 to $2.50 for every engagement (being a click, favorite, retweet or @reply) associated with a promoted tweet. As an incentive to try it out, Am-Ex is offering each eligible business participating in this rollout a $100 credit to kick off its advertising campaign.

If your business doesn’t get in on this initial offering though, don’t fret. Twitter plans “to steadily increase the number of participating small businesses over the coming weeks.”

So what do you think? Does your business plan to participate?

(Calendar image from Shutterstock)