Social media is likely to be factored into your ad budget for the new year, but the problem is deciding which format best suits you. While highly controversial, tech influencers like Chris Pirillo and Robert Scoble are being paid to tweet periodic product endorsements. The question is: Are sponsored tweets are worth it? ReadWriteWeb caught up with Likes.com co-founders Bindu Reddy and Arvind Sundararajan as they make the case for conversational advertising and the sponsored tweets landscape. Sponsor Similar to Ad.ly and Sponsored Tweets , MyLikes is a service that pays influencers to Tweet about specific products. In what resembles an AdWords -style dashboard, advertisers create a budget for their campaign and set the parameters and URL for where they’d like endorsers to redirect their friends. This month, Moo created a campaign in the hopes of selling business card packages to US-based users. Rather than being forced to endorse Moo, members chose to endorse them from a long list of companies. From there the endorser creates a short line about why they like a particular company with a link to pre-populated images, video and the campaign URL from their blogs and Twitter accounts. Bindu believes that because the network gives users options in who to endorse, the sponsored tweets become more authentic and better targeted to the user base. On a cost-per-click basis, campaigns range between $0.20 – $0.60 cents per click based on the influence of the endorser. If you compare this against some of the higher priced AdWords keyword campaigns, Twitter sponsorship is quite reasonable. While a budget analysis is an obvious indicator of whether or not you should sponsor tweets, another factor to consider is your company culture. When Izea’s sponsored tweets program launched in late June many questioned the process of disclosure and the role of a social media influencer. While the FTC Act revisions make the space more regulated, they don’t change the fact that your stakeholders may simply be put off by the practice. I’m going to answer your question about sponsored tweets with another question, “Are sponsored tweets more cost effective than your current click-thru campaigns and will your audience embrace it?” Discuss

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Should You Reserve Ad Budget for Sponsored Tweets?

YouTube announced today that in conjunction with CNN the site is now offering an opportunity for users to submit and vote on questions for world leaders to be asked at next week’s UN Climate Change Conference . It’s the first use of the Digg-like Google Moderator on YouTube and the whole endeavor looks a lot like the Digg Dialogue series with leaders and celebrities. Can events like this draw a significant crowd to hear about the issues? How do crowd-voted questions stack up against questions thought up by expert journalists? Can anything YouTube and CNN do prevent the tides from rising so far that these become academic questions in short order? Stay tuned to find out. Sponsor It’s very nice to see YouTube leveraging its audience to try to prevent the displacement of hundreds of millions of people and the degradation of all life on earth. Hopefully there will be a big ad on the front page pointing to the campaign. It’s not hard to imagine other very large websites doing something similar. It could make a difference! Discuss

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Are We All Going to Die? YouTube Holds Vote on Climate Change Questions

Happy Tweetsgiving ! At any number of companies, people are being asked to do their part. To give something back to their community. Epic Change is taking a different approach. Through tomorrow, the Tweetsgiving campaign asks people to share whatever they are thankful for on Twitter , your blog , flickr , Facebook , YouTube or blip.fm Sponsor The group is asking for your hard earned capital, of course, through PayPal, but social capital is a big part of the campaign, too, by completing tweets with #tweetsgiving and provide a link back to http://tweetsgiving.org . In its second year, the group has the stated purpose to encourage people to show gratitude for what they have. In addition to the online campaign, Epic Change is encouraging people to attend a Tweetsgiving party . Donations will help build an additional classroom, orphanage/boarding facility, cafeteria and library at Epic Change’s partner school in Tanzania. In 2010, Epic Change will continue to look for social entrepreneurs like Mama Lucy, an Epic Fellow. The United Way may be one way to give to your community through your business but Twitter and the social web open a whole new world for ways to give. So, Happy Tweetsgving everyone. We are grateful for your continued interest in the posts we write here at ReadWrite Enterprise . Discuss

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Tweetsgiving: The Twitter Way To Give Thanks