Joel Pinkham

But I think it’s bollocks, and these types of comments are fast becoming my pet peeve.

I’ve just read a blog post about the value of a Facebook user (the rest of this rant won’t make sense unless you read that).

I have a habit that always makes me want to argue anything that’s come from someone biased, so here’s why I think this “detailed” report was a waste of time:

• It takes 18 pages to make the point that a Facebook fan spends more & and engages with you more. Here I was thinking that if someone was my fan then they hated my company.
• It puts a value on the average Facebook fan and then throughout the report it constantly states the obvious by explaining that every company has a different value for a Facebook fan. To me this basically says “the value is $136, but not really”. It’s merely a number to catch headline and for the social media racquet to pull out and impress in pitches and presentations.
• The recommendations are written as general as a horoscope “Loyalty, Spend, Recommendation, Fan Acquisition Cost, Affinity, and Media Value are the key factors that impact fan value. Brands need to develop strategies that address these areas”. In other words, develop the perfect business and the value of your Facebook fan will be higher.

Of course a Facebook fan is valuable, they’re your fan and they’re wearing it on their virtual sleeve.

But don’t believe the hype. My problem is that reports and articles like this have caused a common mentality of “wow, I need to get a Facebook fan page!!” as if it’s the magic answer, but it can easily turn into a meatball sundae. A lot of companies would be better off using their time thinking about how to make something remarkable enough that people genuinely become fans of.

The real value of a Facebook fan – it’s the perfect medium for your true “fans” to spread the word for you. Your happy customers have been doing this for centuries, Facebook just makes it easier for them to do so and much more effective for you.

It's now a cliche

It’s everywhere. Everyone has “trendy” icons plastered all over email/web marketing materials lately. “Find us on Facebook”, “Follow us on Twitter” or a “View me on LinkedIn”. It’s at the stage where it’s become noise.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have an issue with people and companies “trying to connect with their audiences” but it’s pretty obvious a lot of it is done because they think they should or because someone else is doing it.

With so much media attention on Twitter lately, management types who likely don’t understand what’s happening will put the pressure on underlings to “setup a twooter” or perhaps make a “bookface fan page”. If everyone else is doing it, we HAVE to do it to stay competitive. Perhaps not a good philosophy.

The best example of it I’ve seen is with the ATO (Australian government tax organisation – same as the IRD or IRS). You can become a fan of completing a tax return using their e-tax software. Exciting stuff, people everywhere want to be a fan of tax returns.

Last time I saw it had 550 fans. In the scale of things, with 20+ million people in Australia and let’s say 10 million of those completing tax returns, it’s nothing. Why bother?

So what do I think you should do?

Evaluate if it’s going to really going to make a difference. Then make sure you’re going to follow through with it, so many people (including myself) might start something and not continue.

If you don’t understand what it is – try getting into something like Twitter on a personal level. Understand the dynamics of the twitter community so you can figure out how to leverage it for your company.

I haven’t followed through with Twitter myself, but notice I don’t promote my Twitter account?