What’s a tweet worth? According to a study from Opendorse, if LeBron James tweets on your behalf, expect to shell out $140K.
But we found that LeBron James is not the MVP of Twitter. Here’s why:
Oklahoma City Thunder’s Kevin Durant and Los Angeles Lakers’ Kobe Bryant round out Opendorse’s list of most valuable NBA players by value per tweet endorsement. A tweet endorsement from James, however, is evaluated at more than twice that of Durant ($66K) and 3X that of Bryant ($42K).
Image via http://espn.go.com/
We used our competitive intelligence platform to take a look at why a a single tweet endorsement from LeBron James allegedly packs so much punch. Surprisingly, what we found is that Kobe Bryant’s twitter account actually delivers more power per tweet.
For starters, with over 23 million followers on Twitter, LeBron’s audience size — and therefore potential reach — is more than double that of Durant and 3X that of Bryant.
Even more impressive — LeBron’s behemoth Twitter audience grows faster than the rest. Over the past year, LeBron’s twitter audience more than doubled. 64.72% growth on a fan base in the multi-millions is an audience growth rate major brands drool over…
HOWEVER, when it comes to Twitter engagement, Kobe Bryant steals the show. Despite having a third as many followers as James, Bryant managed to rake in more retweets (+1 million vs 987K retweets, respectively).
And let’s take it one step further!
We measured the players’ average retweets per tweet per 1,000 followers, normalizing for each player’s audience size and tweeting frequency.
Now, Kobe Bryant’s Twitter feed truly proves to be the top dog. Kobe’s normalized Twitter engagement is actually more than 10X greater than LeBron’s!
So while LeBron might have the bigger audience, Kobe’s tweets are actually 10X more engaging!
Bottom line: While LeBron may have the biggest audience size, Kobe has the most engaged audience by far. Therefore, we challenge your findings, Opendorse, and claim Kobe Bryant to be the most valuable tweeter in the NBA!