Last year Purple WiFi posted a blog which discussed the value of a Facebook “Like”. The post was pretty popular so we thought we would revisit it and see what’s changed since.
Is £114 really the average value of a Facebook Like?
There’s been a lot of reference online to the 2013 annual report from Syncapse, which placed the average value of a Facebook Like at £114. Of course, as Gavin says in our original blog post, this is all relative – if a person likes a brand which sells higher value products, the value of their like would increase too.
Can we calculate ROI on Facebook likes?
With all these figures from Syncapse flooding the internet, we thought it might be interesting to find out how people viewed the value of a Facebook Like before the report. One such example is from Dan Zarrella, writing on the Harvard Business Review website. Unlike the average value figure presented by the Syncapse report, this article actually includes a formula for calculating the value of a like. The accuracy of the formula is somewhat debated in the article’s comments, but nonetheless it’s a fascinating take on trying to associate a monetary value with social media.
No numbers until you nurture
Brad Chacos, writing for PC World, has a different view. He used data provided by Ecwid, an e-shopping cart provider, which was gathered from 40,000 Facebook stores using its software. Ecwid took 12 months’ sales figures from these storefronts and compared the numbers with Facebook Likes. The results showed that each Like equated to an average of just 21 cents in annual sales. I’m inclined to agree with the writer’s conclusion, which states “I think Forrester’s Augie Ray nailed it when he said that a Facebook like is chock full of potential value, but very little real-world value—virtually none, in fact—until your nurture that connection. Remember, it’s not how many Facebook fans you have—it’s all in how you engage them.“
Liking for loyalty
Courtney Kettmann, who posted an article on wired.com, takes the idea of engagement with social media one step further. She argues that when a person likes a page, they are showing that its content is valuable to them or that they like the brand. It also lets that person’s friends know that they support that brand. However, people like Facebook pages for all sorts of different reasons, not just if they’ve spent money with a brand – they could want access to vouchers and competitions, to look at latest news and updates or simply to view content that’s interesting to them. Lots of likes don’t necessarily mean more spending and more money. Instead, they represent outward displays of customer loyalty – and that’s their true worth.