Social Media Marketing Book

Increasingly companies are trying to tie real world value to their interactions in Social Media.  How much is a tweet worth, how much does the effort cost to get a retweet, or acquiring friends on MySpace or fans on Facebook?

These are ever elusive and for each company the value is going to be different based on the amount of resources (both money and time) invested into the implementation of the particular marketing tactic of the social media marketing strategy.

eMarketer had a interesting post this morning about a report from digital consulting firm Syncapse and research company Hotspex. In their report they came up with an empirical formula that puts an average value of $136.38 on the Facebook fans of the site’s 20 biggest corporate brands.  They based this how much they see that  fans will spend on the brand’s products & services, with additional dollars coming from customer recommendations, loyalty and earned media.

There have been other studies that have shown social followers are more likely to buy a brand’s products if they are a Facebook fan.  These studies though focused more on the brand loyalty aspect rather than the true dollar amount companies could actually connect with their efforts of building a fan base, particularly in Facebook.

So are you measuring the the Return on Conversation or the Return on Investment in your Social Media Marketing Strategy?  What kind of value are you putting on a Facebook Fan, a Twitter Follower, or a friend in a forum or message board?  What is their interaction worth to you and what’s the likelihood that those friends, followers and fans are going to recommend you, pass on your media or purchase from you?  Those are all things that companies need to plan for, set goals for and keep constantly measuring if there is success to be had in their social media marketing strategies.

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