Facebook Fans, What Are They Worth?

So as Facebook updates again and again, constantly revitalizing its systems to try to keep up with the landscape of the internet, we all sit there and get pissed off.

Few things have remained constant, but the idea of Liking or “Being a Fan” of something has been around long enough that people have been able to academically study it.

Recently, a social media measurement firm called Syncapse has come up with an actual dollar value and published it in a report for all to read. You probably never thought Fanning something would be of interest to a brand, you just Like them. But Syncapse studied the Fans of the top brands on Facebook and came up with some interesting conclusions.

To break the suspense, a fan is worth about $136. How do they know you ask? Well, they broke it down and thought strategically. They considered Product Spending, Loyalty, Propensity to Recommend (word-of-mouth, very important), Brand Affinity, Media Value and Acquisition Cost.

They took these metrics and studied people who were Fans of products like Skittles, Oreos, Coca-cola, Adidas, Blackberry, Victoria’s Secret or Starbucks (to name only a few) and compared them to those that were not Fans.

What did they discover when they studied these groups?

• On average, fans spend an additional $71.84 on products for which they are fans compared to those who are not fans.
• Fans are 28% more likely than non-fans to continue using the brand.
• Fans are 41% more likely than non-fans to recommend a fanned product to their friends.

So what?

Well, this means Fans are more loyal, more likely to tell their friends about the brand (and more importantly recommend a purchase) and are more likely to buy something themselves!

Curious about more details? The must have Fan were those of McDonalds, who are frequent visitors to their establishments, are highly loyal, frequently refer others, and actively participate in the McDonald’s Facebook community. Because of all these metrics and the Fan effort the average McDonald’s fan netted the organization a value of $259.82.

Conclusion…

This is crazy! Why don’t these brands pay people, Google style, for recommending their brands? Maybe someday they will, but for now, I am going to login into my girlfriend’s Facebook account and Fan Victoria’s Secret…

The Hint Caravan

Understanding the Internet is more than reading a book or playing Farmville. This, the five guys that wrote the Cluetrain Manifesto understand. While they admit they don’t understand the true purpose of the web – “telephones are for talking to people… what’s the web for.”

This ten-year anniversary addition almost doubles the original book published in 2000. IT contains new information discovered since the before our Web 2.0 generation. Back in 2000, before the popularity of the social web, before Facebook, MySpace or Twitter had taken over the bandwidth this book said something outrageous. “Markets are conversations.”

This simple idea was a revolution in 2000, and the Internet was the best driving force behind these conversations. Today, we take this idea for granted. The idea that outside of a barbershop or store aisle we the consumers can have a true conversation regarding the products or policies of our favorite providers.

Unlike some of my other posts, today I felt this book is too important to pick apart. It’s an Eastern philosophy of the internet. The authors looked at the Internet how an Amish person might design an Internet scheme. I read earlier this month how the Web increases our hand-eye coordination but decreases our critical thinking. This book is fantastic for those who have never thought critically about webspace. For those of us that who have, it becomes more of a How-to-explain book. It’s more of a crash course of more of an eastern school web.