An article in AdAge yesterday references a recent model by a Yahoo Scientist who questions ROI of Kim Kardashian’s sponsored Tweets. Apparently they cost $10k/each.
A bit much I admit, but to simply dismiss it as poor digital marketing ROI may be a mistake.
I believe, as with all social media, the equation is value = quantity x quality
Volume is number of followers x number of tweets. Then there is the exponential part of course (re-tweets)
With >3 million followers @KimKardashian has quantity, the second part is the value of what she tweets. If the product marketed was highly relevant to her followers, and the link from the tweet lead to a good marketing offer, then I do think it could be worth $10K
What would be the worth if Kim’s tweet gets re-tweeted or better yet and just as likely blogged about by several bloggers, or perhaps better yet just one blogger like Perez Hilton who probably has the same type of followers.
Anderson Analytics has benefited tremendously by being Re-Tweeted by Guy Kawasaki several times. We like to call it the Kawasaki Bump internally. I’ve even blogged about the bump to get Kawasaki to tweet it again to get another bump, a bump on a bump. It worked!
Even though our product is totally different considering the audience (market research); when at one point Perez Hilton blogged and tweeted mentioning one of our youth (GenX2Z) syndicated reports, both new customers and old customers contacted us. Guess what, it sold some reports!
It’s a shame so many are still underestimating the power of social media. While Twitter is far from perfect and not the largest SNS (like Facebook), it really is one of the better ways to reach influencers cheaply today.
[PS. Dividing the $10K cost by Kardashians twitter followers gives you $0.003 per follower. That would mean my tweets are worth over $153.00, wow! Seem like a lot? Perhaps not so much if you consider the average price point of an MR project I suppose? But to not take the quality of the tweet and number and timing of tweets into consideration would be a mistake]
![[Post to Twitter]](http://www.tomhcanderson.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter-big1.png){kind=icon}
5 responses so far ↓
1 Tom H C Anderson // Apr 15, 2010 at 6:17 pm
Also wondering if a model shouldn’t have a weight somehow. I think 1 Guy Kawasaki follower may be worth more than 1 Kardashian follower? I now follow both, just to make sure LOL
2 Tom H C Anderson // Apr 15, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Some official Twitter stats released today http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/14/twitter-user-statistics-r_n_537992.html
3 Meta Brown // Apr 15, 2010 at 10:23 pm
Tom, it sounds like your calculation assumes that you and Kim have the same tweet quality. The quality, if we consider that as power to influence individuals, would vary from person to person, and for a single person depending upon the message. An advertiser promoting, say, a data collection tool would likely pay much more per follower to you than to Kim, while a clothing designer wouldn’t give you the time of day.
You don’t know what your tweets are worth unless you either sell them or find a way to calculate your own returns on them.
4 Tom H C Anderson // Apr 16, 2010 at 9:16 am
Hi Meta,
Yes, there are probably several way to assign values. One is simply by what it would cost you to get that number of click through by placing an ad somewhere. But you are right, having someone tweet about you is like paid PR, more valuable than paid advertising because the implied endorsement.
While I could calculate the value to me based on leads which have come in via social media, specifically Twitter (the reports I mentioned for instance), I would be missing the value of lasting awareness, increased purchase intent etc. that they have caused as well as blog postings by other researchers which will have continued lasting impact (who blogs about standard ads often?).
But of course, you are right, it’s totally dependent on the product. If I say something about makeup, I doubt it would have much effect. On the other hand if just a couple of market research twitterers say something good about a certain survey software provider that can be very powerful I suspect.
5 uberVU - social comments // Apr 26, 2010 at 7:51 pm
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