“The Fake News Media hates when I use what has turned out to be my very powerful Social Media – over 100 million people! I can go around them” – President Trump

We’re not here to speculate whether the current President can use his Twitter as a replacement for traditional media coverage. However, we do agree that it is a powerful medium that has the ability to not only promote products and services, but also quickly spread important information, increase and solidify brand loyalty, create empathy, inspire change and move the masses.

It can be argued that solid Twitter campaigns helped decide the leaders of the free world – the President of the United States – in the past three elections.

A five-word tweet landed Uber head of global operations, Ryan Graves, a job that would later earn him as much as $1.6 billion. In case you’re keeping track, that’s about $320 million per word – making him perhaps the most expensive writer out there.

And, of course, you can’t forget all the tweets that led to LOLs.

While there’s no guarantee mad Twitter skills will make you a billionaire, the demand for savvy social media marketers has never been greater. One hundred and forty carefully composed characters have launched careers, destroyed companies, and raised millions of dollars.

Inma and Jose

Anyone has the potential of reaching the world on Twitter. You just need to make it valuable, critical, eye opening, new or fun enough in order to make it happen.

Inma and Jose
A World to Travel

If you’re a Chief Marketing Officer wondering if it’s really worth it to shell out a few grand extra on a professional social media marketing agency rather than having the new intern handle it, take heed of these 18 examples showing just how valuable a single tweet can be:

1. Kylie Jenner Slams Snapchat

TWEET VALUE

$1.45 BILLION

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October 14, 2007 was the day the world changed with the airing of the first Keeping Up With the Kardashians episode. Since then, the Kardashian-Jenners have built empires in clothing, cosmetics, television and especially social media. The youngest sister of the group, Kylie Jenner, has racked up 104 million Instagram followers, 24.6 million Twitter followers and 20.8 million Facebook followers. Harper’s BAZAAR estimates that Kylie Jenner earns around $400,000 for each brand endorsement on Instagram. No, you didn’t read that wrong. Yes, you should rethink your career.

That’s why when Kylie spoke, Snapchat felt it right in its wallet. In late November, Snapchat rolled out a new layout that was fully implemented by mid-January. This layout and reordering of features aimed at separating users’ friends from brands on the app, but it has faced significant backlash, so much so that 1.2 million people have signed a Change.org petition to have it returned to its previous state.

On Wednesday, February 21, Kylie Jenner joined in on the criticism with her tweet stating “sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad.” Snapchat suffered a drop in stock of six percent by the end of the day Thursday. Vox estimates that loss between $1.3 billion and $1.6 billion in market value.

While some were ready to bow to Queen Kylie for her influence over the social media powers that be, a few publications offered other explanations for the downward spiral. Fast Company pointed out that Wall Street already had a negative outlook on the company prior to the tweet and Citi downgraded its stock from “neutral” to “sell” the day before Jenner took to Twitter.

Either way, the Kardashian-Jenners are not a force to underestimate - remember that for the future, Mark Zuckerberg!

2. Trump Tweet Trumps Toyota

TWEET VALUE

$12 BILLION

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To say President Donald J. Trump is a keyboard warrior might be the understatement of the century. The President’s use of Twitter is, well, unprecedented. His tweets have fascinated, deeply confused and sometimes even frightened the press, the American people and even prominent career politicians - but more on that later. For this post, we want to discuss President Trump’s tweets and their effect on the stock market. The above tweet was a reaction to Toyota Motor President Akio Toyoda’s remarks that the company was still planning to “up production” in Mexico.

The tweet was sent at 1:14 p.m. ET and resulted in the share price of Toyota plummeting within five minutes. According to a Fortune article published about a month and a half later, Toyota had not yet recovered from Trump’s tweet and had further declined in value by more than five percent, or $12 billion.

3. Selerity Twitter Leak

TWEET VALUE

$8 BILLION

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In 2015, Selerity, a little-known financial data platform firm, tweeted out Twitter’s first-quarter earnings around 3:07 p.m. The earnings were not supposed to be shared before 4 p.m., and the early leak resulted in Twitter’s shares plunging by $8 billion at one point.

According to the firm, it received the information from Twitter’s Investor Relations page, so it felt justified in releasing the numbers.

4. Ryan Graves lands a job at Uber

TWEET VALUE

$1.6 BILLION

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Back in a time before Uber became a household name, Travis Kalanick was looking for a product manager/business developer for his “location based service.”

It turns out that service was Uber, and the tweet led to its first hire, Ryan Graves. Graves told Kalanick to reach out to him and went from Uber’s first employee to its CEO for a short period of time - Kalanick took over as CEO shortly afterward. Graves did, however, step into the role of Head of Global Operations and became a paper billionaire, making his way on Business Insider’s annual “Silicon Valley 100” list and Forbes’ list of the world’s billionaires.

However, due to company scandals coming to light, Kalanick recently stepped away from his role, and Graves is following suit.

5. United Airlines “Re-accommodates” Passenger

TWEET VALUE

$1.4 BILLION

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In April 2017, United Airlines faced a PR disaster when one of its flights was shown to have less than friendly customer service practices. This situation started when United employees needed to board a flight to Louisville, KY. The crew looked for volunteers to give up their seats for the employees, but when no one volunteered, they randomly chose 69-year-old physician, David Dao.

Being a doctor, Dao needed to get back home to go to work the next day, so he told the crew that he had to be on that flight. That’s when security officers physically forced Dao out of his seat and dragged him down the aisle of the plane, which was all caught on video that was tweeted out by passengers. The videos showed dry blood running from Dao’s mouth, and he left the incident with a broken nose and concussion. Dao’s attorney has announced that he plans to file a lawsuit.

The troubling situation was bound to be a PR nightmare after the tweets were published, but United’s response made everything much worse. United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz’s first response described Dao as “belligerent, leaving security officers no choice but to employ force in removing him.” The CEO later recanted that statement and replaced it with a vow to never allow law enforcement to treat a “booked, paid, seated passenger” in such a way again. However, the damage was already done.

Within two days, the airline’s shares plummeted by as much as 6.3 percent in pre-market trading and lost $1.4 billion.

6. Barack Obama’s 2012 Presidential Tweet

TWEET VALUE

$1.123 BILLION

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When Barack Obama won the 2012 election, he tweeted out a photo of he and Michelle hugging with three simple words, “Four more years.”

Until Ellen’s famous “selfie” tweet, this one was the most retweeted in Twitter’s history. It perfectly exemplified former-President Obama and connected with a massive number of people on Twitter. The tweet was used to motivate and excite his base - and with its number of retweets and likes, it seems it succeeded. In fact, Obama is credited with being the first President to successfully use social media - especially Twitter - heavily in both his 2008 and 2012 campaigns.

The value of this tweet is $1.123 billion - the cost and payoff of winning that election.

7. Elon Musk’s Product Unveiling Tweet

TWEET VALUE

$1 BILLION

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Elon Musk knows how to use Twitter to excite Tesla fans as well as traders, investors and analysts alike. In 2015, one tweet about a new product unveil rocketed market capitalization of Tesla to nearly $1 billion. It turned out that the new product was Tesla Energy, which was a new line of batteries for homes and businesses.

Jaclyn Baldovin

When Twitter users saw that Tesla was unveiling a product that wasn’t its norm, it really piqued [followers’] interests because they were curious what new and innovative product the company had up its sleeve. This tweet resulted in a great deal of engagement with people trying to guess what in the world the new product line could be.

Jaclyn Baldovin
The Digital Content Handbook

8. #ALSIceBucketChallenge

TWEET VALUE

$115 MILLION

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In what can only be described as one of the luckiest coincidences for the ALS Association, the Ice Bucket Challenge began when a Florida golfer, Chris Kennedy, was nominated by a friend to dump ice water on his head for any charity. Kennedy chose to post his challenge in the name of ALS in honor of a relative with the disease. The challenge continued to spread to those with bigger and bigger followings and eventually became synonymous with ALS.

The idea behind the #ALSicebucketchallenge was to be nominated from someone and then either post a video of you dumping ice water on your head and nominating more people to do the same or to simply donate money to the ALS Association. Soon enough, big time celebrities such as Oprah, Taylor Swift, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and more joined in on the cause.

In all, the craze raised about $115 million for the ALS Association, which used much of the money for research. Those funds led to three important research breakthroughs, including the discovery of a gene that contributes to ALS known as NEK1.

Jaclyn Baldovin

I think this tweet was so valuable because it really humanized Robert Downey Jr. At the time of this tweet, everyone was doing the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, and to see a celebrity take the challenge made him seem down to earth – someone who could be your friend.

Jaclyn Baldovin
The Digital Content Handbook

9. Cancer Research UK #nomakeupselfie

TWEET VALUE

$8.95 MILLION

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In a great example of piggyback marketing, Cancer Research UK raised more than $8.95 million by thinking quickly. The organization saw that users were tweeting out their #nomakeupselfie to raise awareness for cancer. When asked if they were the ones who started the campaign, Cancer Research UK said that while they were not, anyone who wanted to do more could give their website a visit.

Though they initially left their response to just that, they saw a spike in visits to their websites and engagement on their Twitter page. Not wanting to pass up this opportunity, the organization tweeted out a selfie of their science information officer, Dr. Kat Arney, without makeup. In the image, she held a sign that said, “We <3 your #nomakeupselfie! If you want to help #beatcancersooner text BEAT to 70099 to donate 3 (Euros).”

Within a day, they had raised one million Euros, so they sent out another no-makeup selfie, which resulted in more than 700,000 text donations. The organization continued to champion this campaign and in the end raised almost $9 million.

10. Obama Responds to Charlottesville Violence with Nelson Mandela Quote

TWEET VALUE

$8.6 MILLION

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Violence erupted on the streets of Charlottesville, VA on August 12th, 2017. Protesters and counter-protesters clashed - at least initially - over the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, a Confederate soldier from the Civil War. Those involved included white supremacists, neo-nazis and other hate groups, and the violence hit a boiling point when one of them ran their car into a group of counter-protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.

President Trump found himself embroiled in controversy over his response condemning violence on “many sides.” However, former-President Barack Obama took a different approach with his response. He tweeted quotes from former South African President and activist Nelson Mandela’s biography. The entirety of the quote Obama tweeted said, “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion...people must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love...for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

The first section of that quote was tweeted out by Obama accompanied by a photo of him with a group of diverse children at the window of a day-care center. This tweet wracked up 4.6 million likes, making it the most-liked tweet of all time, according to Twitter.

ThriveHive states that the average cost per engagement for a promoted Tweet is $1.35. Although this post was not promoted, it does provide an idea of its value - $8.6 million.

11. Oreo Cookies “Dunk in the Dark” Super Bowl Tweet

TWEET VALUE

$4 MILLION

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It was the 2013 Super Bowl, and the Baltimore Ravens had just pulled ahead of the San Francisco 49ers when the power went out in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, delaying the game for about 34 minutes.

While it took a while for the game to continue, the brand Oreos was ready with the above tweet. With less than 140 characters, this tweet became one of the most publicised advertisements of the night - without actually being a planned advertisement. That year, Super Bowl advertisements reached up to $4 million. The brand’s quick reaction to the real-time event earned it a significant amount of free publicity from football and cookie fans alike - as well as publications such as The Huffington Post.

Andrew Selepak, Ph.D.

Oreo’s Dunk in the Dark tweet during the Super Bowl resonated with audiences for two reasons. First, it was during the biggest media event of the year. Watching sports is no longer about just what is on the screen, but also our interaction with other fans through social media. During the stadium power outage, fans didn’t turn their attention to other things, but were still focused on the Super Bowl. But their attention turned from the TV to their phones, and they found the tweet.

Second, Oreo was timely with their post. While the image and text were relatively simple to create, the copy and image were not prepackaged and ready to go before the game. Oreo’s marketing created this relatively simple message on the fly. The spontaneity and creativity of the post during the most watched media event of the year was at the right time on the right platform and resonated with fans while they waited for the game to continue.

Andrew Selepak, Ph.D.
University of Florida

12. Trump’s Press “Covfefe”

TWEET VALUE

$1.6 MILLION

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It was the tweet that led to a million head scratches and attempted pronunciations (is it cov-fee-fee or cov-fef-ee?).

One exciting May morning, President Trump took to his Twitter to talk about how he felt he was receiving unfair press coverage. However, it must have been a long day because what he actually ended up complaining about was all the negative press “covfefe.”

Naturally, Twitter, in all its excitement, exploded with jokes over what this illusive “covfefe” could mean. With most acknowledging it as a typo for the word “coverage,” some hardcore Trump loyalists insisted it was a legitimate use of an Arabic word they claimed translated into, “I will stand up.” This claim has since been refuted and the tweet was deleted six hours after it was first published.

Now, you might be rolling your eyes over this whole “covfefe” debacle, but the tweet could have value - a lot of it - in the future. Representative Mike Quigley of Illinois introduced the COVFEFE, or the "Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically For Engagement" Act, which calls for all of President Trump’s tweets to be preserved as presidential records. If this act becomes law, it would forbid Trump from deleting any of his posts.

"In fact, former White House spokesman Sean Spicer declared that his tweets “are considered official statements by the President of the United States.”

With his Presidency endangered by claims of potential Russian interference, obstruction of justice and more, Trump has been known to take to Twitter to comment. In fact, White House spokesman former Sean Spicer declared that his tweets “are considered official statements by the President of the United States.” Trump's tweets have been used against him in court, and are more likely to do so if the COVFEFE Act becomes law.

Therefore, one wrong tweet (which could not be erased under this proposed law) could potentially take down an already fragile Presidency. We’re not saying that this will or will not happen, nor are we saying that we want this to happen. However, we are saying that if somehow it does happen, seeing as the President makes $400,000 per year and one term covers four years (even though Trump has announced that he does not intend to collect that paycheck), the value of that tweet has the potential to be at least $1.6 million.

13. Stacey Ferreira’s Richard Branson Tweet

TWEET VALUE

$1 MILLION

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Stacey Ferreira and her brother, Scott, had launched MySocialCloud when they were just 19 and 21 years old, respectively. The startup business enabled users to secure and store all their internet passwords.

In 2011, Ferreira saw the above tweet from famous entrepreneur Richard Branson and tweeted back to Branson asking how she and her brother could attend this event, being underage. Branson told them that he would make the arrangements as long as they made the donations, so they received loans from their parents, went to meet him and told him about their business.

After some back and forth and a visit from Jerry Murdock, in which he asked extensively about their business and goals, Ferreira received a $1 million investment from the pair.

14. Arby’s Trolling Pharrell’s Hat at the GRAMMYs

TWEET VALUE

$1 MILLION

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A consistent receiver of jabs from Jon Stewart, Arby’s decided to dish out some sass itself when artist Pharrell Williams showed up to the 2014 GRAMMYs with an - uhm - interesting wardrobe choice - his hat.

The large, unusual hat struck an uncanny resemblance to the one in Arby’s logo, and the company took notice. This tweet cashed in on real-time coverage and earned the company publicity from organizations such as AdWeek. It even earned praise from other brands such as Pepsi and a response from Pharrell asking if the company was trying to start a “roast beef” (heh heh).

Coincidentally, 2014 was the year that the GRAMMYs broke the $1 million barrier for advertisements. Therefore, with its quick thinking, the restaurant cashed in on about $1 million in free advertising.

Tony Lee

All these tweets to a degree used real-time marketing, but Arby’s stands above the rest. Most people probably didn’t realize Arby’s logo was a hat and now think of Arby’s with some brown hats. It’s harder in 2017 to replicate this, but brands can still find opportunities like #NuggsForCarter – if they pay attention.

Tony Lee
shecKiiville productions

15. Wendy’s #Nuggsforcarter

TWEET VALUE

$700,000

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Just a man and his nuggets - and 18 million retweets (or not). Wendy’s makes it onto this list because it can’t help itself from roasting users - more on this later.

Once upon a time, a young man tweeted at Wendy’s asking how many retweets he would need for free chicken nuggets for a year. Wendy’s told him 18 million, and Carter soon recruited some heavy hitters by tagging Conan O’brien and Jimmy Fallon. He even tagged Ellen Degeneres, who held the title of “Most Retweeted Tweet” at that time with her Oscars selfie and teased Carter on her show. However, Carter’s valiant pursuit toward his nuggets surpassed Degeneres, and he claimed the title of “Most Retweeted.” He hasn’t reached 18 million retweets, but this was enough for Wendy’s, which gave him his nuggets.

Though this tweet is technically Carter’s, Wendy’s again benefited massively from all the free publicity. This competition gave them a slew of media attention from the likes of Forbes and CNN, and probably made more people hungry for Wendy’s chicken nuggets.

Dr. Rodrigo Perez Vega

Well, in general terms, a RT requires low efforts from the users, which is why it’s an ideal platform to make content viral. Now when someone shares, it’s indirectly endorsing the content, despite all these things on bios about “RTs are not an endorsement.”

Dr. Rodrigo Perez Vega
Henley Business School

16. Pedigree #tweetforbowls

TWEET VALUE

$630,000

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In 2015, Pedigree started the hashtag #tweetforbowls in response to a Super Bowl advertisement from GoDaddy that many felt was making a joke out of puppy mills.

In just two days, Pedigree put together a campaign that promised to donate a bowl of dog food every time someone used the hashtag. Several celebrities jumped on board, and Pedigree ended up donating 210,000 bowls of dog food to shelter dogs. The Twitter campaign earned Pedigree a lot of free publicity from celebrities and their followers.

According to Pedigree, a large dog should receive about six cups of food each day. If you consider that one bowl, that equals to about three pounds of food. Pedigree sells 50 lbs bags of dog food for about $23. Using that information, the value of Pedigree’s 210,000 bowls is about $630,000.

Cathy Wassell

Twitter is all about cats and dogs, and a retweet takes just a second. A second to feed a dog is a pretty good swap, and the pull on your heartstring doesn’t hurt, either.

Cathy Wassell
Socially Contented

17. Denny’s Helping Fight that “Existential Dread”

TWEET VALUE

$500,000

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Denny’s used Twitter’s zoom feature in an attempt to provide a glimpse into the amusing conversations people often have at a diner (sometimes even at 3 a.m…) according to CMO John Dillon.

The caption on the tweet tells followers to “zoom in on the syrup,” which tells them to “look at the lower left corner,” which says, “now look at the lower right corner,” which leads them to the upper left corner and, finally, the butter, which poignantly asks, “has this distracted you from overwhelming existential dread lol.”

This “grand slam” of a tweet leveraged a current trend and garnered press attention from organizations such as AdWeek.

Emma Vince

Denny’s tweet is a variation on the ‘’zoom-in’’ Twitter meme – a picture which asks users to zoom in on various points in a still image that conceal hidden text that then directs users to the next point of text until reaching an eventual message or punchline. Why was this tweet so valuable to the brand? Denny’s zoom-in tweet started a conversation. It wanted engagement, and with the tweet having over 170,000 likes and 120,000 retweets, it certainly achieved it. A Denny’s spokesperson confirmed it’s the brand’s most successful tweet to date, so in terms of value? I think the numbers speak for themselves.

Emma Vince
Tinderpoint

18. Ariana Grande’s Manchester Emergency Fund Tweet

TWEET VALUE

$404,200

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When a suicide bomber killed 22 people and injured an additional 116 - many of which were children - at an Ariana Grande concert in May 2017, the immediate reaction of horror was soon swept over with a wave of action and strong desire to help.

One such way that people around the world and celebrities helped was by donating to the We Love Manchester Emergency Fund. One of those celebrities was Grande, whose tweet raised more than $404,000 and helped the British Red Cross exceed its $1,119,750 (or one million Euro) goal.

19. Wendy’s Roasts

TWEET VALUE

$100,000

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Not only are Wendy’s roasts on Twitter absolutely hilarious, but they’re also brilliant marketing.

By roasting those who heckle them, and saying what so many social media managers wish they could say, Wendy’s separated itself from the rest of the pack on social media. Its brutally hilarious, dead-pan humor has been great PR for the brand and has garnered a significant amount of media attention from organizations such as Thrillist and Buzzfeed.

Bonny Parker-Davies

We’re seen the rise of brands taking on the trolls and beating them at their own game. This post from Wendy’s is the perfect example. It’s so sassy! People want honest conversations with brands. Posts need to sound like they come from real people, with personality, not corporate robots or bots.

Bonny Parker-Davies
Ledger Bennett

What Tweets do you think belong on this list? Tell us in the comments!