I believe that this is a question that many businesses who have facebook pages are asking. Is it worth all the trouble of maybe even employing somebody to manage a facebook community?

Engaging in communication with a loyal customer base and especially new customers is probably the most important aspect of a business. Whatever business it is! If you do not communicate, you will have no business.

So what is the value?

Syncapse has carried out an empirical survey/review, in which they examined the six leading contributors to facebook fan value

1. Product Spending, which is “The ability to understand the methodology of increasing product spending.”
2. Brand Loyalty: “The ability to understand the available means to influence and promote brand loyalty within a target audience.”
3. Propensity to Recommend: “Probability and propensity for word-of-mouth recommendations leading to sales.”
4. Brand Affinity: “The impact on brand perception and recall.”
5. Earned Media Value: “Efficiencies of earned reach and frequency via the Facebook platform.”
6. Acquisition Costs: “Efficiency of Fans in enticing others to participate and drive organic membership.”

The summary of key findings of the survey were as follows:

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

Of course these are statistical values that are based 4000 fans of about 20 brands, who were questioned.

So the average value of a facebook fan is 136,38$ or about 104,50€. Of course, this is a rather theoretical value and, considering the list of companies taking part in the survey, the figures will certainly be different for SMEs.

BUT there can be no doubt, that a fan has a value through different factors. So even if you put the value to only 20% of these 105€, a value of 21€ per fan remains.

Another Company called sysomos, in November 2009 analysed nearly 600,000 Facebook Pages to investigate usage patterns. They fund that 80% of “pages” would have about 80 fans. Which means, that the majority of pages would have a pessimistic value of about 1600€

Furthermore considering that looking after your Facebook community can grow it by about 3-5 per week. You will add a monthly value of about 360€ to your page. Over the first year this gives you an extra average value of another 2000€ and would sum up to a total of 3600€ in the first year.

Not bad considering that the initial amount of work you have to put into this should not exceed about 1 hour per week.

If you want to build a Facebook community, talk to us, we can help with advice and hands-on help.