Now that social media is widely recognized as a powerful marketing tool, there has been a lot of discussion about the value of the connections made via these channels. With Twitter and Facebook being the top two options, the talk often revolves around followers and fans respectively.
And while experts have been pretty creative when it comes to inventing calculative methods that determine value, there is no one single formula that works for all business. If you want to know whether a Twitter Follow is more valuable than a Facebook Like or vice versa, you need to sit back and evaluate your own unique situation.
Dollars and Sense
Perhaps the most obvious way to determine if a Twitter Follow or Facebook Like is more valuable is to take the traditional approach of breaking your calculations down by the dollar amount. How much are your followers and fans spending with your business?
If you are generating little to no sales via social media, then both have little value in this regard. But when one network is getting you more sales than the other, that determination becomes easier to make. If you are generating sales through both Twitter and Facebook, you can determine value by adding up your total amount of revenue, and dividing it by your number followers and fans.
Engagement
When you want to take your calculations beyond dollar amounts, engagement is one of the most effective measures to use to make a determination. For example, if you are running an Easter-themed campaign on Twitter, you could use your analytics tool to measure the engagement of the original tweet you sent out.
Depending on your system, you may find that the post resulted in so many retweets, so many mentions of your brand, and so forth. In the social media realm, value does not always break down to dollars and sense. A follower or fan who is spreading the word and sharing your content can be just as valuable as one who makes an occasional purchase.
Value is Unique
The most important thing to remember when attempting to decide whether a Twitter Follow or Facebook Like is more valuable to your business is that value itself is unique from one individual to another. It is also essential to keep in mind that value could change on a regular basis. For instance, a loyal Twitter follower might spend an average of $50 in purchases one month, and $100 the next.
This obviously makes it difficult to put a number on their overall value, so if you want to determine their worth, a combination of calculation methods is probably your best bet.
When it comes to what they mean to a given business, some Twitter followers and Facebook fans are obviously more valuable than others. Instead of trying to figure out which offers the most, you may just want to accept that all your social connections have value, and focus on ways to increase that worth.
