Companies pay huge amounts of money to celebrities to endorse their brands on Twitter. The idea is that a huge number of followers on Twitter for these celebrities might make their brand more visible. However, a new study suggests that this strategy doesn't always pay, especially if the brand is already famous.

The study focused on finding out how brand promotion on Twitter influences a person's, between the ages of 18 and 27, opinion about the brand.

Researchers found that the Twitter strategy works well for smaller, newer brands where the owner might want to get public attention quickly. The power of Twitter however, dissipates for already-known brands. Celebrity tweets do nothing more than make people aware of a certain brand and make them search the brand on the internet.

"It appears that celebrity tweets do little beyond communicating product information or encouraging consumers to search online. Our results also suggest that companies with established and familiar brands should not use Twitter's 'Promoted By' option, because this was perceived by respondents as 'lowering their opinion of the brand,"' said Janée Burkhalter, PhD, marketing researcher and one of the authors of the study, in a statement.

Already, each tweet by celebrities like Kim Kardashian costs a whopping $10,000, the news release said

According to estimates, U.S companies will spend more than $2 billion on social media marketing in 2012.

How to use Twitter effectively?

According to researchers, companies should aim at getting more followers for a brand. This will increase interaction with the customer and thus increase visibility and consumer feedback. The researchers cited examples of Whole Foods Market (with 2.5 million followers) and Best Buy (261,000 followers) that have used twitter to get consumer feedback and market new brands.

The study results were presented at International Advertising & Integrated Marketing Communications Conference and should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.