Over on eConsultancy, there is a spirited if brief debate about sponsored Tweets — wherein marketers pay someone to Tweet about their product or service. Writer Patricio Robles grabs a Tweet about KMart by Jeremy Schoemaker (@shoemoney) and dissects the Web stats.
I have two opinions about this post, and topic. First, is this even the right discussion to have about Twitter? In the comments, there are comparisons to other modes of online advertising, using familiar ad terms like “cost per million.” But Twitter seems to have the most value as a means of building relationships online, rather than in direct sales, or at least that what Twitter-ites would say about it. There surely would be direct sales value (Southwest Airlines, Dell) of Twitter — provided the offer was consistent with the target audience, right?
Second, measuring Twitter’s effectiveness solely by measuring click-throughs seems incomplete, because the purchase decision may be influenced by other factors than the Tweet itself. One of the points Robles makes is that of the 220 clicks, just about half are from the United States, and a commenter adds that several clicks are from “bots.” The click is still only an intermediate step in the measurement process — we have to see store traffic increase at the very least, and probably should trace impact on store sales before determining whether the sponsored Tweet campaign’s success.
Marketers do this kind of analysis for virtually every ad channel they use — or at least they should. What can PR people learn from this? The jury is still out on Twitter as a marketing method.
Once the marketers determine the advertising value of the tool, we can expect the PR infrastructure to look for establishing unsponsored value. Let’s be sure to hold out for meaningful reputation metrics and attitudinal measurement, not some kind of equivalency model. That is, unless there are compelling data to support it.
