How much is your Facebook fan page worth?

Last week Steve Kerho wrote an interesting article for Fast Company asking the question: “How much is a Facebook fan worth?” Kerho approaches the article from the accounting angle for the purpose of placing your Facebook fan page on your financial books. But what intrigued me more was the insight he inadvertently gives into better leveraging your Facebook fans. By telling us which fans are more valuable than others he shows us what types of fans we should strive to attain.

Before we go much further let’s define some terms:

• A Facebook Fan Page is a place where a company, organization, or cause can post content and it is mainly identified by the “Like” button toward the top of the page.
• A Facebook Fan is an account holder who clicks on that “Like” button on your page and is essentially “joining” your page. They now show up as a fan of your page and are notified when you update content on the page.

Facebook fan facts

Kerho’s group determined that a Facebook fan is worth between $1 and $5 each depending on several factors, including the dominance of your brand and your industry. If you want to get into the calculus of the formula he explained it in an article back in December 2010.

Among Facebook fans Kerho identified five groups:

1. Brand Enthusiast - Loves your brand no matter what and will tell everyone they know.
2. ‘Likes’ Everyone - They ‘like’ you but they also ‘like’ everything on Facebook
3. Average User - Majority of your customers.
4. Offer Fans - They love free stuff and are fans because it gets them special offers.
5. Issue Fans - They are moved by something your company did.

As a marketer I want to have fans in all these categories, but it stand to reason that some are better than others.

Kerho discovered that a Brand Enthusiast Facebook fan can be worth more than $50 each! A Facebook strategy, while targeting the interests of all five groups, should include methods to turn your average user fans into Brand Enthusiasts.

Marketing insights

Another valuable discovery made in the analysis is that “Brands that employ active community managers have fans that are worth more.”

This is further evidence that businesses who dedicate resources to actively managing social media interactions are better maximizing the value of their fans. Dedicated resources can come in the form of someone on staff whose responsibility it is to monitor and contribute content to the social media platform or from an outside agency tasked with those responsibilities.

The last critical discovery from the article that I felt was relevant to marketers is the conclusion that “the value of a fan is not static.”

Kerho comments that the value of a Facebook fan can fluctuate across time based on the level and quality of content being produced, and the overall marketing strategy of the brand. So while Facebook may play an important role in your marketing, it cannot be addressed in isolation of the overall marketing strategy, if you aim to maximize its effectiveness.

By learning what ‘value’ is in a Facebook fan we can better customize our approach to Facebook and other social media to convert those fans to customers and eventually to brand enthusiasts. 

(If you are interested in the accounting side of your Facebook fan page’s value then you can read Steve Kerho's complete article at Fast Company.)

Image credit: Andrew McClintock