{"id":33608,"date":"2010-06-22T03:09:34","date_gmt":"2010-06-22T02:09:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.corporate-eye.com\/blog\/?p=33608"},"modified":"2010-06-22T03:09:34","modified_gmt":"2010-06-22T02:09:34","slug":"calculating-the-value-of-facebook-fans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.corporate-eye.com\/main\/calculating-the-value-of-facebook-fans\/","title":{"rendered":"Calculating the Value of Facebook Fans"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"currency-chart\"A recent study<\/a> by Syncapse<\/a> and Hotspex<\/a> analyzed 20 top brands on Facebook and the activities of their Facebook fans in an effort to calculate the value of each one of those fans.\u00a0 The average value of each fan is valued at $136.38 according to the study.<\/p>\n

But you should approach that number with caution.<\/p>\n

One of the biggest challenges for big corporations trying to implement social media marketing strategies is calculating the elusive return on investment (ROI) of those efforts.\u00a0 My position on social media marketing ROI is a bit different than the traditional ROI metrics that we’ve all learned over the years as we calculate response rates, lift, and all those other easily quantifiable success metrics that have been developed over the years.<\/p>\n

However, social media marketing is still in its infancy, and the traditional hard metrics that marketers use to justify budgets to corporate executives don’t really apply to social media marketing.\u00a0 Instead, social media marketing is more closely aligned with brand building.\u00a0 Both offer incredible value to an organization, but that value is difficult to measure in hard numbers.<\/p>\n

That’s where what I call the shift from calculating Return on Investment as the form or ROI to Return on Impression as the form of ROI is necessary to evaluate social media marketing success<\/strong>.\u00a0 You can read my complete post about the new social media marketing ROI on the Yahoo! Advertising blog<\/a>, but I’ll recap the highlights here:<\/p>\n