As the mainstream media is dancing franticly around Facebook, we decided to use LinkedIn (our favorite platform for professional growth) to ask our fellow marketers how they perceive the value of the ‘Like’ and received quite a few responses.

The following experts authorized us to share their answers:

Erica Friedman, Social Media Optimizer, Publisher at ALC Publishing, President of Yuricon, New York

Taylor Ellwood, Business and Social Media Behavior Specialist, Internal Alchemist, Portland Oregon.

Mohit Vashisht, Branding, Lead Generation, Business Development, Campaign Management, Chandigarh Area, India

Jason Martin, Online Marketing Professional, Social Media Strategist, Content Curator, Cross-Media Communicator, Cincinnati Area

Question:

What’s the worth of a “Like” for your business?

Answer:

Erica:

Not much. It often means that your business was worth the least possible effort from a person who probably expects the least possible effort on your part to reward them.

The trick is to move past the click-and-ignore of the Like button to create an actual relationship with the folks there. I just wrote about that as it happens. I hope you find it useful

Jason:

“Likes” are a signal that you have someone’s attention. It is the start of a relationship, and it’s up to you, the community manager, to continue to offer and facilitate unique, interesting content so that the people you want to continue to pay attention do so for the long haul.
I say “people you want” because there will always be a portion of those “Likes” that are connected to people who are not paying attention because they really aren’t interested. They saw a post that was shared by a friend, or was intrigued by a promotion tied to your page, and clicked Like because they had just enough interest to keep an eye on you. But those “Likes” fade away, no matter what you may do to keep them, and you don’t really want them anyway. Your goal as a Facebook page admin is to have as many of your Fans take an active role in the community, and a large portion of the inattentive Fans won’t really ever take part. Notice the Pages that have a huge Fan base, then look at their wall and you may just see 80% of the content is posted by the Page owner. You will see posts with no comments, as if the page owner is talking in an empty room. Would you rather have that, or have a smaller number of “Likes” and more interaction? I’d take the latter any day!
In summary, Likes are a gauge of popularity, more than anything else. The true success of a Facebook community is the interaction and engagement between community members, between you and the community, and the quality of comments and shared content.

Taylor:

As Erica said, a Like is the least amount of effort, and yet it’s more effort than none taken at all. Still it’s on you to build a relationship with the people and that means finding ways to make dialogue happen.

Mohit:

A “Like” in itself is quite limited to arrive at a conclusive meaning. There is little that you can directly infer from the Likes however, it is the context and analysis that ensues once you begin to segment the reason for “a certain number of Likes” to keep the data statistically relevant.

Example – a large number of users may “Like” a video posted on Facebook because the celebrity (woman) in that video was quite appealing. It wasn’t the promotional price in the video that got a large number of Likes but the celebrity’s presence. And when you look at the social graph (that captures demographic data) of your profile page you slice and dice the data to arrive at something meaningful. The Gender and Age data shows that it was mostly men who pushed the Like button more than women.

So depending on the subject you are in some position to measure the efficacy of “Like” for business. I am yet to see/read an example where monetary significance to a Like is clearly established to calculate the worth.

I’m using just “insights” at the moment from the Like data.

Question:

Do you see any value in the “peer recommendation” effect that is provided by including the ‘like’ button in a site / blog / topic – which might provide the ability to see how many of your friends ‘like’ it?

Answer:

Taylor:

There’s value in the sense that it can contribute to the metrics that will put the post in the top news feed, and bring some visibility to your post to a larger network. I wrote this post about this topic.

Mohit:

Certainly, there is a lot of value in peer recommendation and “Like” is one way to determine the efficacy of that recommendation. But I believe that “Like” is an unqualified recommendation that needs to be seen in some “context” to draw meaningful conclusions. It tells me that the stuff is good but does not tell me (1) how good? (2) why is it good? (3) what is good about it? In the absence of a defined context, it could however best serve the purpose as an “insight”. The answers to these three perhaps qualify the Like to understand the worthiness of it. If Facebook promotion via a set of videos yields a large number of Likes (because it’s entertaining) without improving the sales of product (probably because it’s expensive) then sheer number of Likes would not help understand the ROI.

Finally, it is a useful metric but needs to be seen in some context or it just measures the popularity.
Erica:

There is marginal value, because peers of your peers already are likely to have noticed and/or read the item – presuming, of course, that you have been expanding your own networks actively and are not waiting for passive expansion.

So, yes, these “Likes” will serve to expand your audience marginally. But I wouldn’t rely on them for making a significant impact unless that item becomes viral. That will add a few more people to your regular audience, but most of the folks will be a one-shot visitor.

I do pieces quarterly on my one blog that get picked up in all sorts of places and they go viral for a day or two. I get a few extra regular readers each time, but not hundreds of thousands. “Like”s don’t hurt. They aren’t going to change your world, either.

Tell Me What Your Friends Like…

As you can see professionals tend to “unlike” the “like”… and for good enough reasons. The bottom line is that counting likes is the easiest measurement… although it’s a metric that is not too valuable.

From our point of view the value is in the context. The setting is very important…

In consumer market, a piece of content that becomes highly viral has a significant value. The value of each individual Like is not high but the fact that the person behind the like contributed to the viral distribution is important (although they may not become customers at all).

In business setting the value shifts – in small or niche industries where the number of topics and the derived conversations is not very high, each Like has significant weight, as the person behind it contributes his/her reputation to piece of content and helps exposing it to his/her professional network. In industries where each deal is crucial, contracts are signed for years and taking one customer from the competition is a huge win, a Like might be a great first step.

I believe that for smaller brands, the peer recommendation may replace the subconscious positive reaction generated by highly recognized brands. A similar positive reaction is generated by a recognized opinion leader, colleague, friend or family member and for brands that do not have the resources to generate that reaction via massive advertising, peer recommendation is a good option which could be achieved by tools such as the Like button.

Mark and Buzz...

Last month (or should we say last year…) Toyota gave our very own Buzz Hunter the opportunity to go on a photo shoot with the Jets’s Mark Sanchez…

Apparently the fans went wild…

As for the campaign itself… It’s done well, visually, but we are missing the ability to easily share videos and photos and gain real viral value and exposure…

Take a look:

http://www.toyotapresents.com/jets-fans-rock?first=Buzz&last=Hunter

Good Luck against the Colts Mark!

One element kept coming up- ROI… How do you measure the ROI of your social media activity?

With our roots in practical marketing, we took on the mission… We tested  a bunch of applications and found that the majority of them simply provide customized social search results- in some cases in a very organized manner, but still- we had to “duct tape” different apps and spreadsheets in order to figure out how our campaign is doing, who are the thought leaders (influencers) we should engage and convert to advocates.

That laid the seed for the concept that brought Buzz Hunter to life- Marketers are forced to act like MacGyver, saving the day with duct tape and a Swiss army knife… And they rarely have the bandwidth for that… We started offering a service around mining data and providing insight.

About a year and a half ago we learned about tracx (www.tra.cx), back then a startup in stealth mode, which developed the answer for our prayers (well, at least some of our prayers…). Expect a post in the near future about what makes tracx so attractive, but in short- we found it to be the only platform that integrates a robust planning dashboard, influencers ranking (including account unification), filtering of the unwanted results as well as real time actionable data and thorough reporting… Need I say more? A whole new Swiss army knife… farewell duct tape!

Our partnership with tracx paved the road to establishing Buzz Hunter. We are now able to provide our customers a cost effective solution which incorporates a state of the art professional grade campaign management tool side by side to providing them a package of services such as:

• Market, eco-system and competitive analysis via mining the conversation social media
• Understanding the brand’s goals and success criteria 
• Insights, conclusions and recommendations for planning and campaign management
• Live A/B testing and Impact analysis of marketing messages and creative approach (live focus group)