Twitter is being used increasingly by companies and entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes. But what is the value of a tweet? If two recent cases of twitter marketing are taken into account they would certainly bewilder a newbie to social media marketing. On one side we have Soulja Boy who is a music star with 2.5 million Twitter followers and on the other we have the car maker Toyota. Soulja Boy’s 2008 album, backed by traditional marketing methods, sold 45,000 copies in the first week. His latest album, which was also heavily promoted on Twitter sold just 13,000 copies in the first week. The reason behind such a disappointing result could range from more attention grabbing global events dominating Twitter during the promotion to simply the latest album not being as good as the earlier one. In any case Soulja Boy’s marketers would certainly value a tweet at a significantly lower rate compared to Toyota whose PR department considers each tweet to be worth $500 of promotional material.

Source: Fast Company