Virgin America is turning to Twitter again to market its latest destination, Toronto. Unlike an earlier foray on Twitter, this time the airline is being a little more selective about who is getting the offer. Virgin America has teamed up with Klout,  a start up that "identifies influencers across the social web" to find the most likely Twitter users to give away free tickets from San Francisco or Los Angeles.

Klout determines a user's influence by measuring some two dozen variables, including the number of times their comments are retweeted, the size of their Twitter audience, and the influence of those followers. (via CNN). It then gives that data a number on a 0-to-100 scale. Users also get a Klout classification describing their style, such as celebrity. Recipients are not obliged to Tweet about the offer or products (other companies such as Starbucks and Cover Girl use Klout as well). It is akin, Klout and its customers say, to receiving a free sample at the grocery store.

By contrast, Virgin announced an earlier expansion into Canada solely via Promoted Tweets - it was one of the platform's early adopters - with a promotional offer of 50% off for the first 500 travelers. Those sold out in three hours.

Problems

There are some obvious drawbacks to this word-of-mouth marketing scheme, Patricio Robles at eConsultancy writes. "Even though Virgin says that it isn't requiring 'influencers' to write about the company and their experiences, and won't stop them from saying negative things, one would expect that participants who do speak up will say far more positive things than negative things. After all, how many of the recipients will really look a gift horse in the mouth?"

It's a common branding mistake - paying the consumer to like you - because it minimizes the sought-after influence factor, she concludes.  "After all, if everyone knows a particular person was basically given free product with the not-so-subtle expectation that he or she would probably say nice things, any related recommendations made to friends and followers aren't likely to carry the same weight as recommendations made by real paying customers."

Does It Work?

There is also evidence that word of mouth via social media does not necessarily - or always - translate into tangible gains for the company.  A social media monitoring company called Viralheat spent a month tracking one million social media mentions right as nine major TV shows were airing their season finales, Mashable reports. It looked at data from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google Buzz and then compared the social media buzz with the Nielsen TV ratings for each show. It wanted to know - does chatter on the web equate to eyeballs on TV screens?

The research determined that online buzz does not always correlate with ratings. The sentiment analysis of social media chatter casts those mentions in a new light "as even when ratings are lukewarm (as was the case for the Lost season finale) social media chatter can be overwhelming in volume. But a lot of those mentions online expressed a negative sentiment."

All in all, Viralheat found that Nielsen ratings combined with social media sentiment analysis provided the best snapshot of how a show’s season finale performed with viewers, Mashable said.