That's the conclusion that SumAll, a data visualization and analytics company, reached after a review of over 900 of its customer's social media efforts. Retweets, they found, diminished revenue a bit - each retweet only garnered around $20.37.
The company also found that the first tweet is the one that generates the most return. After that, it takes about 6-8 tweets a day to double the revenue earned. Overall, though, the company estimates that a successful Twitter marketing strategy could add about 1-2% of revenue to a business annually. The optimal number of tweets per day for a business seems to be about 6.
Of course, as a spokesperson for the company told me via email, that's "highly variable from business to business." Once you consider the average number of eyes that see an individual tweet, the revenue gained is only about $0.005 per impression. That's lower than other marketing tools and only "a bit higher then an AdWords impression," according to the spokesperson. In other words, while that 25 dollar figure "seems high it is actually very little value to our sellers," she said.
Still, some companies can use Twitter more successfully. One of SumAll's customers gains about $29.34 per tweet, with retweets worth $26.19, with an overall total reach of over 400,000 people. They're able to leverage Twitter with their successful YouTube channel to get a better return on their marketing.
In the end there, there's something to be said for the idea that a picture is worth a thousand words - or characters, in the case of Twitter: SumAll found that Instagram followers are worth about 10 times as much as Twitter followers in terms of return on revenue.
