The Value of a Social Media “Fan” – $3.60

Unfortunately, these are my personal fans.

Jennifer Lowe, our Director of Online Media, just directed me to the most interesting article in AdWeek regarding the value of a Facebook fan to a brand.

Brands have rushed to Facebook to build fan bases, with some amassing millions of connections. The nagging question has been: What is the monetary value of these fans?

Social media specialist Vitrue, which aids brands in building their customer bases on social networks, tried to put a media value on such communities.

The firm has determined that, on average, a fan base of 1 million translates into at least $3.6 million in equivalent media over a year.

The company’s findings are based on impressions generated in the Facebook news feed, the stream of recent updates from users’ networks.

What is even more interesting is, as impactful as this number is, it only solves for funneling information to the consumer and does not take into account the value of actual engagement.  The article states that social customer-relationship management is probably the most powerful incentive for brands to build “fan” bases.  Agreed.

To this end “social customer-relationship management”, or as we refer to it “digital audience relationship management” (DARM), is something that goes into all our proposals and is a service we provide to a great deal of our clients.  This public conversation with “fans” is what we now consider an integral part of customer support, marketing, and brand extension.  We used to call it “community development and management”, but we got all fancy on ourselves recently.  🙂

–Amy