We are now 4 months into 2012, and you know what that means….No, I’m not checking on my resolutions.

We have accumulated enough data from our time tracking and Google Analytics accounts to give you an ROI example of Tweeting! If your eyes aren’t 1. rolling upwards OR 2. glazing over, then I suggest you keep reading.

Let the fun begin with calculating our costs:

So I’ve spent an average of 40 minutes per day reading and tweeting around 6 articles on my personal Twitter account and our business Twitter account. Since I’m pretty sure many people can do this, I marked this type of activity as $25 per hour.

In total, I spent approximately 48 hours reading and tweeting articles plus I pay $5.99/month for Hootsuite, which comes to $1,200.  We now have our cost.

Let’s figure out our revenue:

In the period between January 1st and April 30, 2012, we received 13 leads from Twitter. Our average sale price is $2,000, and we closed our leads at a rate of 10%. Let’s do some math:

13 leads X $2,000 Average Sale Price = $26,000

$26,000 X 10% Close Rate = $2,600 Total Revenue from Twitter

Social Media HQ’s Twitter ROI

(Revenue – Cost)/Cost = ROI

($2,600 – $1,200)/$1,200 = 116%

The next time someone asks you what the ROI of Twitter is, show them this blog post

As Jay Baer says, social media is a different kind of expensive.

Have you approached social media ROI this way? Would love to hear your thoughts.

photo credit: media funnel