Chris Crum has a useful article at WebProNews on sponsored Twittering. It seems that popular entertainment blogger Perez Hilton makes a pretty good buck selling sponsored tweets. Of course, most of us aren’t Perez Hilton or enjoy his level of influence. That’s a different matter.

Today’s question is, Should you charge for sponsored tweets?

I’m leaning against it for small business owners. Here’s why:

• You want your Twitter account to be about your relationship with your followers, not your relationship with your sponsors.
• You could get a reputation as a sponsor hound if you do it too often or choose the wrong sponsors.
• Your small business will likely suffer by accepting a few dollars for a sponsorship when you really want people to buy your products and services.
• Since paid tweeting is often paid by CPC, cost per click, unless you have a lot of followers – like more than 100,000 – you probably won’t make much on sponsored tweeting.

You have to decide when you set up your Twitter account just want you want Twitter to do for you. If you joined Twitter to promote your business then you shouldn’t use sponsored tweets. The only time I’d say you should accept sponsored tweets is when what you are tweeting about will interest your followers, then you should do it for that reason and not for the money. But be open about your sponsorship. If people find out that you are accepting sponsors and you haven’t been transparent then you could have some credibility issues.

Tags: small business, sponsored tweeting, Twitter

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 20th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.