So How Much Do Celebrities Make From Social Media Activity?

Kim Kardashian, who has a whopping 18 million Twitter followers,earns around £7,000 for a single tweet mentioning a specific product. Others like Elizabeth Hurley, Victoria Beckham, Justin Bieber and Wayne Rooney have all tweeted about brands that pay them either per tweet or have endorsement contracts with them.

Celebrities in India too, like their counterparts in the West, have started including social media like Twitter and Facebook in their brand endorsement contracts or are getting paid separately for tweeting about brands, as marketers scurry to reach their online fan base.

Several big and small celebrities including Chetan Bhagat, Anusha Dandekar, Shruti Haasan and Unmukt Chand have already started raking in the moolah through social media deals with brands.Twitter is a very big aspect of a celeb’s reach. Sponsored tweets are  gaining traction in India.

Social media contracts, which include Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Instagram and websites of celebrities, cost a brand up to 25% of a traditional endorsement contract with a celebrity.

Krossover Entertainment helped VJ Anusha Dandekar ink social media contracts with ITC and Crocs shoes. Anusha tweeted about Crocs shoes with pictures while the brand on its Facebook page also made sure that her association was hyped up. Online apparel and accessories brand American Swan signed actress Shruti Haasan and cricketer Unmukt Chand in similar deals earlier this year. The brand organised live chat sessions for fans to connect with them, which the celebrities actively promoted on their social media handles including Twitter. These were 2-3 month-long contracts which were targeted to connect with the right set of audience in a focused manner.Deals like these can range anywhere between 10 lakh to 30 lakh for three months and depend on the popularity of the celebrity in the digital space.

For brands,social media deals are far more cost effective than traditional endorsement deals, particularly in the case of top stars. For instance, if a star charges 1.5 crore for a traditional brand endorsement contract for one year, the person would charge just over 35 lakh for a social media deal. Social media deals, however, cost at least 1.5 times that of what a brand pays to advertise in the online space. Then there are celebrities who are getting paid per tweet by brands and that could go up to 5-7 lakh per tweet for a celebrity who has about two million followers.